Who are Universities accountable to?

[Hattiedoodah]

An administrative issue has arisen with dd’s University - she has two exams scheduled which overlap (final year) so that she will effectively get half the time of the other students to complete the exams. She’s tried to resolve it with the student education service team and her faculty but has hit a blank wall as they said the exam timetable is set and cannot be amended. Who is the next person up the chain? I know with secondary school, ultimately if the staff won’t address a problem then you can go to the governors. With University - who is actually accountable for the fair running of the University? This seems so blatantly unfair I can’t believe the University is refusing to address it. Thanks.

OfS won't do anything - it's not their remit (I've linked below to the correct procedure and external organisation). OP you are still missing the point that although the exam must be taken within that 48 hour window, it isn't an exam that students are expected to take 48 hours to do.

Just because your dd has previously taken 48 hours, doesn't mean that is the academic standard to which she will be assessed.

OP,

If you choose to pursue this, for your DD’s sake I hope you will do so with a more open mind than you are exhibiting here

As you surely know, once again you have elided my words and missed the point.

Furthermore, even if you can’t access the guidance for these two exams, your academically excellent DD may be able to access guidance for the many previous exams you have referenced. Precedent is likely to be a good guideline.

She'll have the guidance, probably since the start of the semester. It will set out the amount of time she's expected to spend.

It does sound like she needs to start wrapping her head around devoting one day to each subject.

DfE?

I’m not missing the point about the 48 hours - I get it. But surely the fact that some students will get 24 hours and others will get 48 hours is unfair because other stuff happens within 24 hours of a day.

Poetry - come back to me when you’ve had to fight for your child the way we have. When you’ve sat by her hospital bed, when you see the injustice they face every day and in the face of the breath taking incompetence of a so called excellent university you are met with a computer says no attitude to their mistakes.

This is a parents’ forum. The way I approach the University will be different but if I’m dealing with people like you I suspect they will not care that they are failing an academically excellent student.

I would ensure that a staff member escorts her directly from the first exam to another room to complete the second exam whilst this staff member is the invigilator throughout

This is what I would propose as a common sense solution

That's it out of line OP, @poetryandwine cares deeply about her students.

They're 48 hour online exams, not traditional exam hall exams (where a clash wouldn't be allowed or would be mitigated as you say).

I have just done undergrad and masters in the new covid times - our exams became 24 hour ones.

Now, the guidance was still - take 3 hours like normal and then use a bit extra to finess the answer/spell check

However, NOT ONE person does this - everyone pretty much spent 24 hours. You had all the time to find new articles/ argue better/recraft sentences.

this was law - the difference of a few marks pulled your answer from 68 to 72 and got you that first.

I was doing the whole thing FOR INTEREST (as a mature student with another career) and whilst i didn't stay up all night, i did still spend many hours doing each exam. You would have to be supremely confident to say after a few hours - thats good enough, it will do!

(my next professional exams were 3 hours, closed book - i was EXHAUSTED at the end of those after 3 hours of typing at high speed)

so yes the university won't change it as not expected to spend 48 hours on each one, but its unfair to those where it clashes, giving others the appeareance of an advantage.

But surely the fact that some students will get 24 hours and others will get 48 hours is unfair because other stuff happens within 24 hours of a day

Not really no. Other students will have other stuff that happens - that's why the window is there. Her stuff happens to be another exam. Another students stuff maybe an internet or power outage, a hospital appointment, an ill child, being in a different time zone. If extra 'stuff' happens to her on top of the other exam, then she'd have a case for mit circs, but the long window is there to enable students to deal with the other stuff and still have time for the exam. They not expected or marked as if they need to spend 2 x 16 hours on the question(s). They'll be expected to spend maybe 8 hours on it.

It's the first time I've heard of a 48 hour exam - but I'm not going to be surprised if the University are unsympathetic. See this from University of Leeds:

"I have more than one exam timetabled in the same 48-hour period. What should I do?

You will need to complete your open book exam during a specified time period (normally 48-hours). However, the exam will not take the full 48-hours, and you are only expected to write for the time given by the Module Leader.
If you have more than one open book exam scheduled for the same or overlapping 48-hour period, this should not be viewed as a clash, and it is up to you to manage your time effectively."

Source: students.business.leeds.ac.uk/assessment/guidance-on-48-hour-open-book-exams/

That is why I want your DD to have all the mitigations the Office for Disabilities recommends for her, OP. And was, eg, the first to query whether she was registered, to recommend that she write to them directly instead of merely cc-ing them.

I second previous suggestions that you are always free to go to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator; however I honestly don’t think it likely that the arguments you have made thus far are likely to prevail. I do think your DD is entitled without question to have her SEN honoured. You’ve not discussed here how she has been failed on that count. The other is still murky in the absence of the guidance, to every HE professional who has posted here.

Aside from anything else, I hope and expect that something will happen this week. Timings have perhaps been an unfortunate coincidence

Great thanks, @ColleenDonaghy

Thank you, @macshoto.

I think we need a national policy so that degree classifications have a consistent meaning

Has your daughter tried talking to the other students with the same problem OP?
The issue here is the difference in interpretation. if the exam is 'expected' to take 8 hours, but they give 48 due to timezone/differences etc. It is your daughter who's putting in an excessive amount of effort, SEN or otherwise. Even if she takes 16 hours for an 8 hour exam that still leaves a lot of time,

However one could argue that. If students are 'expected' to take 8 hours it's up the university to enforce it by, say enforcing a specific time window. E.g you can login at anytime but a clock starts when you do. Then again people could get around this by getting the questions from friends who had sat it earlier.

I imagine that there is quite a big difference in the way someone might do a 48 hour history/law exam compared to a 48 hour exam in some STEM subjects. For the former there is bound to be the occasion when you suddenly remember that you saw a great source to back up a particular point. You know that it was somewhere in the notes you made at the archives but you then need to go back through your notes to find it and make sure it was how you remembered it. A few of those and you're looking at an extra 3 hours beyond your writing time. Then you need to spend time looking at your footnotes etc etc - same with law you know that there was an obiter comment in an obscure case that supports your point somewhere but it can take a while to dig it out. So having half the time of others really is a disadvantage even if the uni won't recognise that.

Having said that I do think that you were actually quite rude to a PP who often goes out of their way to help on HE threads and had given you some very constructive advice on the most likely route to success.

This is a parents’ forum. The way I approach the University will be different but if I’m dealing with people like you I suspect they will not care that they are failing an academically excellent student.

@Hattiedoodah This comment is unwarranted and way out of order.

What is a 'consistent meaning'? For whose benefit? Universities? Employers?

It doesn't really make sense for universities because they know what their specific subjects need, and also have the capability to go through modules/transcripts in detail to assess if undergrad degrees etc fit their criteria.

Employers? We couldn't care less and prefer professional exams. It's ironic that OP mentioned them as a comparison (although she has a valid point) because the aims can be quite different to university exams.

Pressure is an aim in professional exams. Not an 'unfair' disadvantage in university exams (which is as a PP alluded to partly why 48 hour exams etc were introduced). Fair enough considering that granular performance matters in university exams while the professionals are just pass or fail.

But a professional is expected to perform under all sorts of conditions, especially in my STEM field, tech. Things break, deadlines change, new things are required at short notice.

If the university is arguing that 48 hours already takes 'everything, including a clash' into account. That's why they have 48 instead of, say, 24. They're unlikely to want to budge. It's a question of the 'desired effect' vs what actually happens. They are arguing that OP's daughter and people with roof breaking/ill child/whatever are in an equal state as the students that have the full leisurely 48 hours therefore they don't need to do anything.

But OP, that is no different from any students taking any exam of any type. Some students will have two or three GCSE's or A levels in a day, some will be beautifully spaced out. It is never equally fair to all. Same at uni. It depends on the modules and the spread. It is not "breathtaking incompetence", it is impossible to timetable every student and every exam equally across hundreds or thousands of students.

Your DD has obvious extra needs, and I am sure she therefore gets extra time for assignment deadlines? I am not sure if these also apply to 48 hour exams or not but she needs to follow up on all the suggestions already given.

Exactly how are they failing your obviously academically able student? There still needs to be a cut off somewhere. What exactly is it that she needs.

I was thinking if @burnoutbabe ’s post, @BeckyBloomwood3 . Degree classification is a screening tool for large employers; many require a 2.1.

I don’t like nonbinding guidance for the reasons @burnoutbabe illustrates. Where does abuse of guidance shade into cheating? Possibly never, possibly it varies according to wording. Students may interpret guidance differently and according to what Burnout wrote some are then penalising themselves.

I like your idea that students log on to an exam and start the timed clock at that point. Agreed they could cheat, but they can now and your way would be more clear cut.

This would remove my concerns after this thread that different interpretations of guidance could lead to different degree classifications. (Different disciplines could have different approaches, per @londonmummy1966 )

Start a thread in the mature students forum to ask how many people spend as much time as possible on 24:48 hour exans versus how many spend 3-4 hours.

When you have paid thousands for a degree and you need high grades to get a good job (I was doing law) then you want to do your very best.

And yes as it's law you can spend ages researches each quesuons asked.

And as you have a strict word count, sticking to that also takes ages to cut it down to amount allowed.

I do not miss it!

@burnoutbabe and @londonmummy1966 - you have illustrated exactly why it is unfair for some students to get twice the amount of time.

My response to @poetryandwine has been purely a response to her patronising tone and implying that having several autistic students and sat on a committee grants her a rich understanding of autism. Also snarky comments like ‘Furthermore, even if you can’t access the guidance for these two exams, your academically excellent DD may be able to access guidance for the many previous exams you have referenced’. I have no idea what she is like at her job, she may be excellent, she may be arrogant and crap, I wouldn’t dream of making an assumption.

My dd is academically excellent. She is not excellent at any executive function, emotional regulation, timekeeping, sensory overload, reading a room or managing stress, not at all. But she IS academically excellent and I am enormously proud of her achievements. I mentioned it as a counter to any assumption that she’s raised the issue with her exams as she can’t manage academically.

Disability services haven’t failed her and I never said they did. She has the legal requirement of extra time but as yet they have failed to respond to the current issue.

I just cannot get on board with the ‘it’s not unfair for one student to have 24 hours another to have 48 hours because they will never spend all that time’. If that were the case then give everyone 24 hours to stop this scheduling conflict. As I’ve said repeatedly, I almost think her disability is a red herring here though, it wouldn’t be fair for ANY student.

No one made the slightest assumption about your DD's academic ability OP, anyone who has spent five minutes lecturing will have come across very able students with needs such as your daughter's.

A solution will be found. It may not be exactly what you would like to happen for the reasons outlined in this thread.

I still think you owe @poetryandwine an apology, she has posted plenty of very useful advice, spending her weekend trying to help someone who isn't even her student.

Lastly, as I'm sure you know, it needs to be your DD approaching the university although you can of course guide her.

Kindly, OP, there is nothing than can be done. Students who would normally get extra time for an in-person exam don't get more (at my uni) for a 24 hour one, as there are already an extra 21 hours.

Sorry I can't remember when you said the exam was, but the rubric should be available in advance, or as PP says look at past exam papers. It will likely say something about how long is expected to be spent on it and/or the expected word length.

Honestly this is never something that has come up before and I've had a lot of experience with online exams and students with ASD/ADHD.

The only thing is there could be a late submission period? We have 24hrs. However I don't think we'd accept a clash as a reason but that would because of the above, 2 x 3hr exams in 48 hours shouldn't be an issue. I appreciate you feel differently but academic and PS staff spend a huge amount of time helping students, particularly those with extra needs. I've worked in HE a long time and never met anyone who wasn't putting students first, it's upsetting to think parents may feel like this when we spend so much time working with their children so they have the best experience and come out with the best degree possible.