Third year disaster at Uni

[DifferentChild]

DS has just finished his 3rd year at Uni. He’s been told that he will graduate with a 2:2 as he got a very low grade on a module as he misunderstood the task and it’s reduced everything. DS has had DSA for dyslexia and ADHD since the first year but earlier this year the uni changed his personal tutor due to redundancies and he’s had zero contact with his new tutor since. He was told he could resubmit the module assignment at first and now told he is to graduate with the lower grade.
Is there anything he can do to appeal this and resubmit for a chance to improve?
I don’t understand why students with additional needs are left to get on with it. Help is available we’re assured but he has to access it himself and chase things himself. His difficulties mean this just doesn’t happen and he’s left feeling he has wasted 3 years.

I think it’s not as bad as you think but also, and in the kindest way, students at universities do have access to lots of support but yes - they do have to go looking and seek it.

A university is an educational setting, not somewhere where everything is provided on a plate, just like in life a job won’t fall into their lap and they will have to work for it. This is a life lesson for him, if he wants to change it then he needs to ask if he can re-do the year.

Have they followed procedures properly regarding any potential resit opportunities?

Op I would get in and start to kick up a stink about this unfortunately support across our education sector is totally patchy and depends on the specific person helping.

Don't let it slide if it's their issue they should put it right

Help is available we’re assured but he has to access it himself and chase things himself.

Yes, that's the deal with an adult. Did he try to make an appointment with his tutor? Did he seek learning disability help/extra coaching/extra time thropughout his degree?

Academic staff can't help students if students don't actively ask for assistance. At my place, someone with a learning disability would be given automatic extensions, and could have access to assistance eg someone expert in assisting students with dyslexia.

But by third year ... he's about to go into the world of work, and should have learnt by now when & how he needs assistance.

He could appeal that one assessment mark by citing his disability and the impact it had on that assessment for him - is it that dyslexia etc means he has difficulty processing the rubric /requirements for an assignment?

But I'd be asking - why didn't he actively seek out help? It's there, and over the 3 years of his degree he needed to be an adult and learn what he needs.

So pleased to read this - what a great story! Congratulations @user1471548941

If the student didn't proactively take up the opportunities for extra support, that is NOT the university's problem. I will always assist a student who needs help if they ask (indeed, I've supported many students in seeking a diagnosis - I seem to be able to pick undiagnosed dyslexia ...) but I'm not a mind reader.

Part of the task for students with learning or physical disabilities over the 3 years of their degree is to learn how they will navigate the adult world of work and being an adult - how they need to ask for help, what help the need, what they can learn in managing their disability as an adult. It's a wonderful opportunity to make the transition with support, but in the end, students need to ask, to be pro-active about managing their own disability - to make their abilities really shine out.

The most relevant issue here is: he was told he could resubmit and is now being told he can't. That is really bad management on the uni's part, and if this single piece of work really is the difference between 2:2 and 2:1 borderline, then he needs to challenge this and show evidence of being told resubmission was possible.

But it's also profoundly frustrating that he has to access any help for himself, as that is precisely what ADHD people struggle with. A well-run welfare support system for SEN students would have a drop in hour every week - same time, same place, well advertised online and in posters, so students know exactly how to access the support they need.

@ParmaVioletTea yes it is because many students need guidance and help this support wasn't there.

@ParmaVioletTea see reds post below yours and this is why having your ear your system and approach needs to change

@DifferentChild I've always found it has to be parents complaining that bring about any change as well so try and chase it

It's your son's fault he messed up the assignment. The lecturer would have spoken about the assignment during the lecture and there would have been some kind of guidance notes on the university portal. If he still wasn't sure what to do, he could have spoken to peers on the course and emailed or arranged to speak to the lecturer. For structuring assignments, he could have made an appointment to see the study skills team in the university library. He could have asked for the assignment guidance in a more accessible format if that's what he needed. He didn't do any of that.

He fucked up. He's human. He's hopefully learned from it. Yes, the consequences are that he's got a lower degree class than he was on track for but that's life.

You can't expect the university to let every student who has a disability resubmit assignments until they get the magic 2.1 just because they didn't make the effort to use the support that was already available.

I say that as someone with ADHD by the way, I'm not ignorant of the struggles your son no doubt faces.

Completely agree with this

Good to know my 2:2 is a ‘disaster’ and means I wasted three years 🤨

You could appeal I suppose.

But I wanted to say that he hasn't wasted his 3 years.
I've got a friend I've known since nursery who got a 2:2. She's a very clever person so I was surprised she didn't get a higher grade but I think that some aspects of her degree suited her better than others (based on how her career has progressed since).
She went on to do a masters and impressed the department so they kept her on for a PhD where she went from strength to strength, specializing in a particular aspect of the subject and now she's a professor in that subject at a very well-regarded university and has also had 4 books published and chaired national committees.

This and several similar stories above are fantastic. The situation is far from a disaster. The DS is no doubt disappointed, but he just needs to recover and start considering his options.

@IsthataYes parental involvement generally isn’t helpful in my School, but then when students follow well publicised procedures there would be no need for it. When they don’t, parents can help them behind the scenes.

Of course when it is a question of concern about a student’s safety or a serious concern about their well being we will contact the parents absent good reason to refrain.

I know the job market has changed since I graduated - over 40 years ago, but I have never been held back by getting a Third! I was on track for. 2.1 at the start of my third year but just bombed my final exams and my dissertation was pretty poor as well, I have no idea what went wrong!

I already had a job offer before my degree result and the company did not ask me for my grade, just needed to know I had passed. My grade never came up in various internal promotions.

After a few years as a SAHM, I retrained as a teacher and even though I included my final grade on my university application form, they did not question it at the interview, they were more interested in any experience I had of volunteering in schools and the subjects I had taken at University - had to be one that linked to the National Curriculum.

I ended up as Assistant Principal and SENCO of a large Secondary school before retiring a few years ago. I was a bit ashamed of admitting I got a Third but it rarely came up and I was not held back.

Hopefully with a 2.2 your son will succeed in his chosen career, my son, age 36, got a 2.2 and now works in digital marketing earning over £80k a year so his degree certainly has not held him back either. He has dyspraxia and was given support for that at University which helped him a lot. He was more hindered by his painful shyness which meant he struggled in interviews but once he moved up the ladder a bit, he was headhunted by agencies for more recent jobs.

A 2:2 is a respectable degree OP, it's certainly not a disaster or a waste of 3 years.

A 2:2 is fine! Good on him !

The university may well have this, but even if they do, a drop in service still requires students to drop in to it. I think those of advising that help is there if students look for it don't mean they should have to be a genius to work out where under the piles of bureaucracy they can find a form to complete to ask for help - we mean ask for help via the service that will undoubtedly be advertised in student handbooks, on student-facing university websites, in posters around campus and perhaps in an office that's centrally located on campus.

And please - for the posters suggesting that the OP gets involved and kicks up a stink - just don't. He's likely to be at least 21 years old. The OP sticking her oar in and saying that the university should have done more to make sure he understood the assignment won't achieve anything. By all means she should ask him questions to ascertain what he did about not understanding it, what help he could have accessed, and how to submit an appeal or a complaint if necessary. Kicking up a stink though, helps no one.

Op please get clued up on their policies and I'm sure you know your son's limits... Unfortunately not stepping in will mean a grade that sits with him his whole life, whether that impacts or not is yet to be seen.
However... To the University it won't make one jot of difference

I aghast that some posters don't think a personal new tutor shouldn't reach out to their students either

Who is suggesting this? Some of us know how many invitations for students to make appointments with PTs languish in their inboxes. Statistically speaking students with ADHD and other ND conditions respond at a lower rate than average to these invitations.

A PT with whom a student has shared details of their condition may choose to chase the student up, and I can understand how a student could mistakenly come to rely on this. But ‘mistakenly’ is the key word there. It is clearly expressed at every university in the land that students are responsible for replying to communications from staff.

No one said this

check the uni regs. He may well have cause for appeal on the basis that due process wasn’t followed. If upheld, this would allow him to resubmit the assessment as a first attempt. However, this would likely mean not graduating at the same time as the rest of his year group. If the lack of contact with the tutor was because your son was supposed to take responsibility for this then the appeal is less likely to succeed. Would be worth him discussing with the Student Union advisory service to get their thoughts - you could usually be party to that, with his agreement. Also be aware that if his final transcript has been issued then there will likely be a time limited window in which appeals can be made.

It’s not a disaster he has a degree. I get it’s disappointing that one grade has brought his average down, especially if he feels with more support he could have done better. But as you say the support is there, he has to access it….and he will have been told this. I get he has adhd and may be more liable to procrastinate over stuff like this but no university lecturer is going to chase him to book an academic tutorial.

i book 1-1 personal tutorials (via teams) for all my personal tutees twice a year and I’d say 80% don’t turn up. I know some of my colleagues think I’m bonkers for actually booking the slots….they just send emails out saying if you want a meeting let me know and get even less uptake. To be honest though the personal tutor is unlikely to be the person he would have needed an academic tutorial from for the assignment, it would normally be the module lead. Again I get very little uptake for such tutorials even though I tell people at the start of a module I am happy to look at sections of a draft or have a 1-1. The module lead/team may well be unaware of his adhd diagnosis.

There will be a system in place at his university where he can apply for extenuating circumstances and if granted he would be allowed another uncapped 1st attempt. Normally this is for stuff like illness, bereavement and needs evidence. I’m not sure that him not seeking support even with the adhd diagnosis and change of personal tutor would be enough. He could enquire but he may also be too late, there are normally strict timings regarding this.