UCAS form question re. school reference

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A friend and her DC suffered a major trauma the month before the DC did GCSEs which badly impacted the GCSE results and is still impacting the family now. They are still early in their recovery journey. The DC is now in year 13 doing their UCAS application. The school has said they will include the contextual info in their reference. My friend would like to see this info (to give her peace of mind that it is done appropriately), but doesn't want it to be shown to her DC because it is still very raw and potentially triggering. She is struggling to explain this to the school.
I don't want to include any more detail on the whys and wherefores, as it's not explainable without the full circumstances. I just have a question - in the school's reference, is there a separate distinct section for contextual circumstances? If so, the request may be simpler as the school will be able to show the DC their academic reference without showing them the difficult bit. If not, it will be more difficult, but knowing the answer either way will help my friend to frame the message to the school.

Your friend is not entitled to see the reference at all. However after submission the student can obtain a copy from UCAS if the school doesn't went to show then before submission. But it remains the case your friend, the student's parent, has no entitlement to see it if the school does not want to show them. However in such circumstances most schools would liaise to give an appropriate reference but she can't insist on keeping the student out of the loop!

The second of the three sections of the reference is specifically about extenuating circumstances.

This is distinct from contextual indicators, which are things like free school meals, carer responsibilities, first in family to go to university, postcode HE participation/index of multiple deprivation, etc., which are from DfE data, postcode or tick-boxes in other sections of the application.

Thanks for this. Is the question labelled as "Extenuating Circumstances" or something else? Knowing the name is really helpful, because it will help her to be specific in her email.

@Spirallingdownwards is correct. She doesn’t have a right to see the reference full stop, and some schools do just have a blanket rule that they don’t share it - if a student wanted it, they could get it from UCAS so the schools don’t need to allow students to see it as such. It creates a lot of extra work.

that said, I would hope they’d be flexible in your friends case, but as it’s the young persons application, they may not feel comfortable keeping them out of the loop. I know my friend who is head of ucas at her school has a policy against this.

The relevant section would be called extentuating circumstances. You can see examples here: www.ucas.com/file/705841/download?token=-OUGsneb

Hi, OP -

Former Russell Group admissions tutor here.

The answers above are very good, but do not quite address the question you posed as I understand it. Your friend wants to have peace of mind that the extenuating circumstances are discussed appropriately, if I may paraphrase you.

Gently, that seems to imply that she is hoping to exert some kind of prior approval - because what would she do if she only saw the reference after submission and didn’t like it? Even the schools that will show references to applicants ahead of submission shouldn’t be negotiating over them.

For emphasis, I believe that your friend and her DC are traumatised and everyone understands that this affects people’s judgments. I am sure the school view the family sympathetically. But I don’t think requesting a prior look at the reference is the right approach. Normally the writer is sadly well experienced on conveying trauma and its aftermath, and admissions tutors are generally sympathetic.

A bigger question for me is, if the DC is still dealing with the aftermath of the trauma, are they ready for university? They very well could be; however long experience of Mitigating Circumstances panels has shown me that one of the most common mistakes both students and their parents make is to overestimate the readiness of a fragile student to begin or restart university.

OTOH for some it is a great way to refocus away from a tragedy. It can be tricky to know where a given YP is on this.

Best wishes to this family

OP please ask your friend to step away.
A parent demanding to see the UCAS application and wanting to shield it from their child is a massive red flag.

The school/ college does not have to go into detail. Presumably the school got permission from the applicant to put the information in? If they didn’t get permission they shouldn’t put it in. I’m not sure it makes sense to ge honest. I would be mightily worried though, if a parent at the school I worked in was trying to do this.

Agree the dc needs to agree that it is included in the reference. Would the course involve an interview, it might be useful to preempt any queries with a positive answer as to how they have overcome challenges or have developed resilience.

A bigger question for me is, if the DC is still dealing with the aftermath of the trauma, are they ready for university? They very well could be; however long experience of Mitigating Circumstances panels has shown me that one of the most common mistakes both students and their parents make is to overestimate the readiness of a fragile student to begin or restart university.

I do not have the experience of Poetry but I do have a DC who had a year out due to different circumstances.

I would suggest gently to your DF that her DC might be best applying next year after having a year working and having therapy.

After experiencing my DS going from a student to working full time i can really recommend it. He matured, gained valuable life skills and most of all decided that an education was probably a good decision

I think the teenager would need to give explicit permission at the very least for it to be shown to a parent without her as the “middleman” - how would the DC react to this?

DD had a school reference with extenuating circumstances in it and universities also have their own extenuating circumstances forms as well which can be filled in to each university applied to. As a parent I was not involved in this process at all, at this age it's between the child, school and universities. After DD had an offer her firm choice asked again about special circumstances and they asked for proof which DD got from me but at no stage did I see any of the forms. She got her first choice and they were lovely with her.

I am very sorry for your friends family but I don't think she will be allowed to see the forms / references and even if they do they won't alter them to what she prefers and think she might just traumatise herself more by pushing for it. My DD was also interviewed several times by the school for the forms as staff kept changing, it was traumatic for her to be questioned and the last time she just said to school I am not going through this again, see the notes and they used notes. I can understand wanting to protect her child from that but unfortunately to be declared and taken into account the child has to be involved but they can do something quite basic if needed and if her DD is finding it difficult tell them to stop. My DD did not have a gap year and is loving university but it depends on the child and the circumstances and it's certainly worth considering. Whatever the school have written it won't adversely affect her child's chances and if her grades go down it may mean they let her in anyway. It will also all be kept confidential.

My son's school sent him his reference and asked him to check it - which was lucky they did because there were some mistakes including writing his name wrong (must have been a copy and paste job) and leaving his SEN provision out. The thing is...I think once submitted the child can see the reference regardless so if the child looks into her UCAS account and see's the reference with this information would that be triggering for her? All the unis have a form on their website for extenuating circumstances...maybe its better if she and her daughter prepare this form together and submit this?

I've seen too many references with howlers in them to think it's a good idea for schools not to share them with families before submission. So yes, I think that you have every good reason to want to ask the school whether you can see the reference before submission to ensure that the extenuating circumstances are framed appropriately.

This is difficult, @Ceramiq

I agree with you that mistakes in references are unacceptable. But references that are being screened by parents are in some cases less useful to admissions tutors. Do you see a way to find a solution that works for everyone?

In my son's school students/parents could not influence the reference but we were able to point out mistakes or things that were missing (like my son's SEN provision). I think that's a good half way house.

That’s good as far as it goes, @HappyTwo

But referees won’t necessarily write the same letter if it will be seen by candidates or their parents as they will otherwise. I don’t mean that they will write harmful letters in confidence; referees advocate for their pupils.
But there will be differences

At PG level you can waive the right to see your letters. Not doing so is a mark that you don’t understand the system, anywhere I have worked or studied.

I doubt a strong candidate would be rejected for not waiving, but it never helps. The rare occasions a student has failed to waive, I have asked whether they would be more comfortable with another referee and explained that at minimum their stance will be noticed. I can think of only one weak student who did not waive.

Given that applicants can retrieve a copy of their reference pretty quickly after submission to UCAS I don't really see where the problem lies: school references are not designed to be forever confidential. The whole UCAS system is about applicants doing a lot of upstream research in order to position themselves as accurately as possible to the very limited number of universities to which they may apply. The best UCAS applications, IMO, are those where the applicant and the school have discussed openly what should be included in the application and where (PS or reference) information is most relevantly included. The school's main job is to prevent applicants from making ill-advised choices and to steer them towards the universities/courses where they are likely to thrive and the reference should be focused on this.

@Ceramiq I am not sure I agree that UCAS references aren’t designed to be confidential. Sure, you are allowed to request a copy, but you do so at your own risk. That is a legal outcome rather than one the universities or schools particularly wanted. It isn’t because there is anything to hide.

I would bet that the most typical result is a vague sense of disappointment, with the next outcome being a more acute one and the discovery of material mistakes coming some way below this. And a good portion of the disappointment will come from applicants who got perfectly appropriate offers, even desired ones.

Few of us are as special as we hope, and teenagers have yet to learn this. Why anyone thinks it is a good idea to show them a professional discussion of their histories, capabilities and potentials (the last two of which may be wrong, in either direction) is beyond me.

Perhaps applicants should submit the salient facts for the reference in a bulleted list and a third party should proofread for these.

I also agree with you about the ideal of the collaborative approach to university applications between the school and the applicant. Sometimes however it is too much to hope for

On the wider discussion, a broad policy of providing references for feedback would produce a much bigger workload for teaching staff which is just not reasonable in most cases.

A good option, which some schools local to me do, is to provide a form to students and parents at the beginning of Y13 and provide a short window (2 ish weeks) for the form to be completed with anything they want included on their reference. If the school feel they can’t include the info for any reason, they can then have a conversation with the pupil. But otherwise the reference isn’t shared.

That sound good, @AelinAG

I am not aware that mistakes in letters are frequent but I suppose a reader wouldn’t be. If an inconsistency ot other obvious mistake seems important, the admissions tutors simply contact the writer. Minor errors don’t matter. How many major errors slip by uncaught is something I don’t suppose we know.

Whatever the original intention of the reference, and perhaps it was once supposed to be a confidential professional discussion of an applicant's histories, capabilities and potentials, that confidentiality has been lost for some time in, among other things, data protection legislation. We live in a world that is infinitely more transparent that the world we lived in a generation ago and that affects everything we do and say. Applicants and schools have an awful lot more information to collect and process than they did a generation too; the language of evaluation has evolved as its practices have become more rooted in evidence. We might mourn our lost world and the rather obscure coded jargon of English academia (which persists, but has lost a lot of ground). But we don't live there anymore.

This doesn’t address the question of whether seeing letters (before but particularly after submission) is on balance helpful to applicants, @Ceramiq

I say categorically that those letters known or suspected to have been screened by pupils and family ahead of time are not very useful. Some schools and agencies have a reputation for this.

Of course if a child is that rare true gift to their field the writer is not going to hold back on account of sharing, and admissions tutors want this information. However most shared letters are very anodyne. So are some others, of course. But not the best ones.

Again, school referees are advocates and invested in helping to make the best matches. I would leave them to get on with their jobs. The idea that applicants submit salient information in writing as suggested by @AelinAG is excellent.

I don't address whether or not seeing letters of recommendation is helpful to applicants because the situation moved long ago beyond the relevance sort of value judgement. Applicants will see letters of recommendation. I cannot see what is to be gained by schools withholding letters of recommendation and applicants requesting them subsequently from UCAS. All letters of recommendation are written in full knowledge of legislation; the benefits of applicants and their parents checking letters of recommendation for howlers are very great for both applicants and schools.

We should agree to disagree on this one

Perhaps. It seems to me like wishful thinking to want to return to the situation of a bygone era. I am happy to agree that the bygone era was preferable, not to agree that we should pretend we still live there!