Removal of Extensions for Students on Taught Masters Programmes
From 2016/17, extensions for students who are in the final stage of a Masters programme will no longer be available.
If a student experiences personal mitigating circumstances which affect their ability to submit assessmentsfor the final stage of a Masters programme (commonly referred to as the dissertation or project), they can utilise the Personal Mitigating Circumstances (PMC) Procedure or consider an interruption to studies.
Personal Mitigating Circumstances
The current PMC Procedure permits students to submit a PMC for either late submission or non-submission using the student portal available at .
Where work is submitted within the late submission period (i.e. within four working days following the submission deadline), late submission penalties will be applied. If a PMC is accepted, then any late submission penalties applied will be removed by the Board of Examiners.
In the case of a PMC which is accepted for non-submission, a student will be offered a replacement assessment attempt by the Board of Examiners. It is possible that the Board of Examiners may not meet for some time so, in order to ensure that students have a further submission date given for their project/dissertation without any significant delay, the following process should be used
Where PMCs for non-submission are accepted, the Chair of the Board of Examiners will be notified and Chair’s Action taken to approve a replacement submission date.
To ensure parity and consistency, a standard replacement date will be offered:
- 6 weeks for students on a full time Masters programme (from the original submission date);
- 12 weeks for students on a part time Masters programme(from the original submission date).
The replacement submission date should not fall in a University vacation period, for 2016/17 this includes:
- 19 December 2016 – 5 January 2017 (Christmas);
- 3 April 2017 – 21 April 2017 (Easter).
In line with the PMC Procedure, students will not be permitted to submit multiple PMCs for the same reason to extend their submission date.
An international student who has a tier 4 visa will only be able to remain in the UK during the time leading up to the replacement submission date if they have sufficient leave to remain in the UK as stated within their visa.In addition, in order to comply with UKVI requirements, they will also need to submit an attendance monitoring record form once a month. If a student has been unable to attend supervision sessions due to mitigating circumstances, it would be appropriate to offer (where possible) support to students in the time leading up to the new submission date.
Interruptions
Students can apply for an interruption to studies using the student portal available at .
There will be implications for students with tier 4 visas who interrupt studies. askUS can provide further guidance.
Annette Cooke
Quality and Enhancement Office
25 August 2016