Special Circumstances

The University is committed to supporting its students. Special Circumstances Committees (SCCs) will seek to take account of illness, accident or other circumstances beyond students’ control that have adversely affected their performance in assessment.

Please refer to the Special Circumstances Policy for full guidance:

www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/special_circumstances.pdf

Special Circumstances are circumstances which are exceptional, beyond your control, and for which there is sufficient evidence to show that they had a significant adverse impact on your performance in an assessment, or resulted in non-attendance or a non-submission for a scheduled assessment.

It  is  your  responsibility  to  submit  your  request  for  consideration  of  Special Circumstances  as  soon  as  possible.  The deadline for Special Circumstance requests is not more than one week after your final assessment for the semester. SCCs will only consider accepting submissions after this deadline where you can provide evidence of exceptional reasons for having been unable to submit on time.

Your request for consideration of special circumstances must be submitted using the

Special Circumstances form:

www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/special_circumstances_form.docx

Special Circumstances forms should be submitted to ECA-SSO@ed.ac.uk

The form should be prepared in consultation with your Personal Tutor and/or Student Support Officer. In the form you should describe the circumstances, state when the circumstances affected you, and detail all of assessments and courses affected. It is important that you clearly explain the impact that these circumstances had on your assessment. You should provide sufficient documentary evidence to support your request.

Details of what is considered sufficient can be found in Section 6 of the policy:

www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/special_circumstances.pdf

Further guidance regarding the Special Circumstances process is available to you from the following sources:

Academic Services:

www.ed.ac.uk/academic-services/policies-regulations/if-things-go-wrong

The Advice Place:

www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/support_and_advice/the_advice_place/academic/special_circumstances/

The  Advice  Place  can  provide  independent  advice  to  students  regarding  the preparation of their requests for consideration of Special Circumstances.