Mitigating Circumstances
Mitigating circumstances are those which have had a detrimental effect on your studies. Examples include illness, the severe illness or death of a close family member, a shocking personal experience. Abrupt changes in family circumstances might also affect your ability to make academic progress.
It may be in your interest to ask for such circumstances to be considered in mitigation for poor performance. The University Advice for Students page (Section 10) makes clear that, if an application for consideration of mitigating circumstances is accepted, marks will not be changed for assessed work or examinations. It may however lead to an extension for a piece of assessed coursework, or a further attempt at an examination.
You should note that long-term chronic conditions and disabilities are dealt with separately through Reasonable Adjustments.
Assessed Coursework (PX-coded modules)
If the mitigating circumstances affect a piece of assessed coursework for a PX module, you should contact the module leader directly as soon as possible after the problem arises. They will be best-placed to decide what needs to be done. Please do not submit an application on the Tabula Mitigating Circumstances portal, unless instructed to do so by the Department; the portal is primarily used in Physics for notification of circumstances affecting examinations (see below).
Most pieces of assessed coursework (answers to examples sheets, Moodle quizzes, interim reports, lab notebooks, lab reports, programming assignments) are part of year-long or term-long series of assessments. Extending any of the intermediate, sometimes weekly, deadlines is not helpful. It would mean that you would be completing previous coursework when you should be working on the follow-up experiment or examples sheet, or preparing for the assessment for another module. Extensions to later coursework deadlines are also problematic as they reduce the time you would have to prepare for examinations.
However, when one-off issues such as acute illness or major accidents affect substantial assessments, a deadline extension can sometimes be possible. In such cases you should contact the module leader so that the consequences for later assessments and examinations can be discussed, before any extension can be agreed. You should note that the functionality to apply for an automated (Self-Certified) Extension on Tabula has not been activated for PX modules.
Assessed Coursework (external departments)
Some assignments set by external departments are eligible for Self-Certified Extensions on Tabula. In all other cases, please contact the Physics Student Office by email or in person, who will liaise with the external department on your behalf.
Examinations
You can make a formal application for consideration of circumstances affecting an examination or collection of examinations on Tabula [> My Student Profile > Personal circumstances]. Before making an application, please read the University Policy and the University Advice for Students. It is usually advisable to discuss with your personal tutor too.
All applications should be supported by medical documentation and be submitted no later than Thursday of week 37 (Term 3, week 8)*. This is 5 working days in advance of the Mitigating Circumstances Panel meetings in Physics, which are usually scheduled for Thursday of week 38.
The Mitigating Circumstances Panel for each year consists of usually all (but at least three) of: the Head of Department, the Director of Studies, the Senior Tutors, the Deputy Head of Department (Teaching), the Examination Secretary for the year in question, and the Educational Support Services Manager.
* If you are prevented from attending an examination scheduled after this deadline for medical reasons, the application must be received no later than three working days following the missed examination. For circumstances relating to September examinations, the deadline for applications is the last day of the Resit periodLink opens in a new window.