Any academics around (especially Nottingham???)

[Londonmummy66]

I need some help with a tricky issue. My father died on Tuesday. DD is a third year with several deadlines looming and is distraught and struggling to focus. Her uni have told her that she can only ask for mitigating circmustances/extensions if she provides a death certificate within 10 days of the date of death. The hospital finally sent the papers to the coroner today and we understand that there will almost certainly be a postmortem. SO a death certificate is very unlikely within the time limit. Is this sort of rigidity normal or might the uni be prepared to accept an interim official third party confirmation of death - eg a letter from the GP to say they have had the notification from the hospital, which they could file until the formal death certificate is issued?

TBH she could do without the stress of this inflexibility (and so could I).

Does anyone have nay ideas of what we can do?

@poetryandwine -sorry to tag you but I know you are an academic and are often a fount of wisdom....

Any university I have been involved with would absolutely accept, e.g., doctor’s note in the interim. Unfortunately, people do lie about grandparents’ deaths, so it is necessary to provide documentation.

I’m sorry to hear about your loss. The uni is being very inflexible from my experience. Has your DD spoken to their advisor of studies (may be called something a bit different)?

The uni should provide a list of acceptable evidence for extenuating circumstances. A letter from GP confirming death and its impact should be fine. I’m sorry for your loss

I'm not at Nottingham, but the process is pretty much the same across the sector. Increasingly universities have to have clear & apparently rigid conditions for mitigations - sadly because of the students who try to cheat the system. Grandparents are a category in mortal danger at exam time, I'm sorry to say.

But when it's genuine it can feel as if the university is adding insult to injury. It's unfortunate that your DD is caught in the rigidity at a time when she needs understanding.

I think your DD needs to find a sympathetic department administrator, and - as suggested - an interim letter from the family GP, or someone in obvious authority - who can explain the difficulties with the timeline.

I know in my department we had such an administrator and she would walk distressed students through the process. But - cuts and redundancies took those kind of staff away a few years ago.

Hi, @Londonmummy66

My sympathies on the death of your father and DD’s grandfather. Thank you for tagging me.

I agree with PP that ‘death certificate’ can be interpreted broadly in the situation you describe. I think evidence that there will be a post mortem, and that this is the reason a death certificate is not being issued promptly, will do the job. It certainly would for us.

Realistically the Coroner is not used to dealing with Mit Circs panels; the GP is. I would ask your father’s GP or the hospital for a note confirming the death, giving the name and contact details of the Coroner (including email if possible) and explaining the likely delay. I think DD should submit this note with any other evidence you have, such as an obituary or Order of Service. She should ask whether the School wishes her to submit the Death Certificate when it is issued (giving whatever information she has about timings).

Very best wishes to your family

PS Cross posted with @ParmaVioletTea Her idea of getting help from a sympathetic admin person in the School, if there is one, is excellent.

Thank you all - I know that the coroners office is doing all they can to expedite this in the circumstances - there are lawyers and medics there who remember university finals but her personal tutor who has so far been amazing, is not getting any joy from the central team. Goodness only knows what happens if someone dares to die a day before an in person exam...

Do you think that it might help for a parent to ask to speak to them in these circumstances as it would at least take a level of stress off DD?

Goodness only knows what happens if someone dares to die a day before an in person exam...

General advice following (from 40 years of doing this):

If they are "fit to sit," we generally advise students is to sit the exam, having submitted whatever evidence they have, and then follow up with more & more official evidence later. They need to make an official request for mitigation BEFORE an exam, but they shouldn't miss the exam - doing the exam in the summer resits rarely gives students a better grade in these circumstances. They've lost momentum etc etc

Obviously, if a student is in surgery or recovering etc, then they they're not "fit to sit."

Once the mitigations have been formally requested and paperwork submitted, the "special Circumstances" or "Mitigations" committee will look at the student's spread of marks across all years of their course, together with the evidence of illness or emergency personal circumstances at the time of the exam, and see whether there was an effect.

At my place we have a set of evaluations of impact (low impact, no impact, high impact), and these are then passed on to the Exam Board. The Exam Board can then use these in conjunction with regulations about rounding up, or "preponderance" etc etc to determine the student's overall grade and thus graduating class mark.

Mitigations committees generally assess without a student's name - they are looking at the actual figures of marks & grades. The Exam Board doesn't see the mitigation documents - it's all very anonymised.

Often, students may feel there was an impact, but their marks don't reflect this ie. the mark for the exam taken under mitigating circumstances is generally no more than a couple of marks lower than the overall run of their work. Pretty normal variation, in other words. In this case, the student's overall class mark is very unlikely to be affected.

So your DD should make an official request for mitigation, outline the concrete ways her grandfather's death has impacted her ability to prepare for the exam eg. traveling to family, away from the library, time taken in helping you etc etc - she should try to be really concrete about this.

Then she should get on with studying & preparing for her exams. I tend to advise students to try to use study as a way of distracting them from their anxieties - do an hour of study, then 30 minutes of worrying - it sounds very pragmatic, but if she feels she has a plan for study, then that might calm her down more generally. It might help her to feel that she can rescue something of "normality" in spite of her grief. This could be a moment of personal growth & resilience for her, rather than everything being awful - here's at least one thing that could be achieved.

It's compartmentalising, but her studies & her future are important, and generalised upset is not helpful for her to dwell in. But then I remember when my grandmother died (and I'd spent a lot of time with her in her advanced old age - she died at 90), I got a tremendous burst of energy and the desire to really live - it was my first experience of the death of a close relative, and started that maturing process of "Life is short & it's not a rehearsal."

I've tutored students with dying parents and what is really difficult for them is a version of survivor's guilt. Maybe she's feeling that - but her grandfather is unlikely to have wanted her to plough her exams - that might help her.

@ParmaVioletTea - thank you - good advice and I will pass it on.

What a nice and, I hope, helpful post from @ParmaVioletTea above. As a survivor of many Mit Circs panels and Exam Boards, I agree that whether or not DD has sat her exams will have no impact on the outcome of her request for mitigation. If she can’t, she can’t. But sometimes students fear that showing up will work against them. It doesn’t.

I would go a bit further than @ParmaVioletTea because whilst including the concrete aspects of what her grandfather’s death has cost DD are important, we also make allowances for emotional distress. At my place it is suggested to include a brief, accurate discussion of this.

(My beloved grandmother’s death at a bad time in my own studies resonates with both the experience of distress and @ParmaVioletTea ’s words above)

@Londonmummy66 , your update about the CO is very good news. I would bet my house that a letter from a lawyer or medic there, explaining the circumstances, will fulfil the requirement for evidence at least for now. If you could get such to DD asap, she could submit the Mit Circs petition with the letter and a comment that the Death Cert will follow when available.

Much better than letting the clock continue to tick on this.

You can help enormously by dealing with the CO. It’s best if DD continues to deal with the university. She can contact the Senior Tutor or Director of Undergraduate Studies (or similar) in her School either via email or in office hours if there is no helpful admin person.

I appreciate her tutor’s efforts. I think the lack of response just means no one has a ready answer and the query got deprioritised.

THank you @poetryandwine - I should have the GP letter on Monday and I hope an interim death cert by Friday so I will draft something. Part of the problem seems to be that the uni require her to upload docs to a portal rather than being able to send in an email explaining the situation and providing the evidence she has.

Those systems can be awful! But this one should be designed to upload letters, certificates and documents of many different sizes easily. 🤞

An interim certificate is great but anything on CO letterhead, signed by a lawyer or medic, would suffice for us. I hope that’s also true st Notts.

My lovely (former) administrator advised a funeral notice or order of service or death notice would be accepted in lieu of a death certificate.

And yes I forgot to include emotional distress in what your DD should include in her request for mitigation. But if she can say then what the effect of that distress on her studies is, in a concrete way, that will really help.

As a couple of us have said, unfortunately dead grandparents are a bit of a misused theme at exam time. It’s unfortunate.

Thank you everyone - I've sent this thread to her as there is such good advice here.

Yes - linking the distress to the need for mitigation is crucial at my place, also! Sorry I forgot to make this clear.