This page provides information to students about appeals against the decision to withdraw you from your studies, when this has been the outcome of the Attendance and Engagement process.
It is important you read the information on this page before you complete the appeal form.
As a student at the University of Kent, you are responsible for attending your lectures, seminars, lab sessions and other meetings in your timetable. We record your attendance and engagement because studies show that high attendance is likely to help you achieve better results.
If you are receiving student loans or have a student visa, we are also required to record your attendance to comply with student loans or visa requirements.
Your Division noticed that you had not attended for eight weeks and had not engaged with the emails they sent to check up on you.
Our Student Attendance and Engagement Policy says that you will be withdrawn from your studies if you do not engage with any of the emails sent to you and do not attend any of the support meetings during the eight weeks prior to receiving your withdrawal letter.
If you are an international student, immigration law says that we cannot sponsor you if you do not attend in any 60-day term-time period.
For any other reason than providing new evidence to support your extenuating circumstances that your Division was not previously aware of, you can submit a formal appeal within 28-calendar days of receiving the outcome from your Division. We will treat this as a valid reason for not submitting an early resolution request.
OR
You can submit an early resolution request only if you have new evidence that you want to provide to your Division, which it was not aware of previously. You have to submit your early resolution request within 7-calendar days of receiving the outcome from your Division.
You will receive an outcome from your Division within 14 calendar days.
If you are dissatisfied with the Division’s response, you will need to submit a formal appeal within 7 calendar days of receiving the outcome from the Division.
We understand that there may have been reasons why you were unable to attend or engage with our emails or calls.
You can submit an appeal against the decision to discontinue your studies if you have experienced one of the following grounds and have evidence to demonstrate this.
Under what circumstances would I make an appeal on the grounds of Administrative, Clerical or Procedural Error?
If you think that it is a mistake that you have been recorded as not attending in the eight weeks prior to your withdrawal, and if you have got evidence for this, for example:
This list is not exhaustive.
In any of the circumstances, you have to submit objective evidence to show how and where the error occurred.
Under what circumstances would I make an appeal on the grounds of Illness or Other Extenuating Circumstances?
If you have been ill or have suffered from other extenuating circumstances, but have had good reason for not being able to tell your Division about this. Normally, you should alert your Division immediately to any new illness or other extenuating circumstances and explain how this affects your ability to attend or engage with your studies.
Reasons that you are only now able to provide this information could be, for example:
This list is not exhaustive.
Please note that you should have evidence of the illness or other extenuating circumstances for your appeal - and the reasons why you were not able to present this evidence before.
Under what circumstances would I make an appeal on the grounds of unreasonable outcome?
Where the decision to withdraw you from your course was unreasonable, for example you had been in touch with the Division and provided reasons and evidence to explain why you could not attend but these were not considered.
You cannot normally appeal on these grounds if you have new evidence that was not available at the time the decision to withdraw was made. If you have new evidence, for example of illness, you should appeal on the grounds of illness or other extenuating circumstances.
Under what circumstances would I make an appeal on the grounds of bias?
You can appeal on these grounds if you think the decision to discontinue your studies was made in a biased way, and that your case was not assessed impartially.
This could be the case, for example, if other reasons than non-attendance were factored into the decision.
Please note that you have to provide evidence of bias to support your appeal.
