Will my situation be better?
Looking forward at the year ahead and taking in to consideration your situation now and what
additional support might be put in place for you, do you think this coming year will give you a
better chance to perform to your best academic ability?
Should I make the request now or see how I do in my reassessments?
If you have not passed coursework and exams and have been sent to reassessment, you could wait
and see how you get on in your reassessments before making the decision.
However, if you take your reassessments and fail them you are likely to be withdrawn from the
course (this doesn’t apply to those taking delayed first attempts in August). If you are
withdrawn from the course you will need to make an academic appeal against withdrawal in order
to request to repeat the year. It might be better to request a repeat year or appeal now and ask
for a delayed first sit, if you have grounds. The appeal process takes 4-6 weeks and if you wait
to appeal until you get resit results, there may not be time for you to go through the appeal
process following withdrawal from the course to enable you to start studying again in September
if your appeal is upheld.
If you find yourself in this situation you may be looking at taking a break in studies before you
are able to return for the next academic year.
While this may seem worrying, we're not looking make anyone unduly concerned. We want you to
be as informed as possible in order to make the best possible decisions.
If you feel, based upon your current situation, you are unlikely to perform at your best in this
upcoming assessment period and would like to repeat the year then this is an option you should
consider. To have a chance of starting a repeat year this September, you would need to start the
process of requesting it before the resits.
Can you afford a repeat year?
If you are studying with the financial support of Student Finance in terms of receiving Tuition
Fee and Maintenance loans, and you have never repeated a year, you should receive a further
year's funding.
Eligibility for student finances is worked as follows:
- length of course + 1 additional year – previous study (HE study regardless of whether
Student Finance was taken or not) = funding available.
- Example 1.
Johnny is in his 3rd year of a Drama degree. He is in his final year and
hasn’t repeated a year before but has requested to. For him the calculation
would be:
3 years (length of course) + 1 additional years – 3 years (the three years
study he has just completed) = 1 years available funding.
- Example 2.
Jess was also studying Drama and in her 3rd year but she had completed a year of
Biology before switching to Drama. For her the calculation would be:
3 years (length of course) + 1 additional years – 4 years (the 3 years
study she has just completed on the Drama course and the 1 year doing Biology) =
0 years available funding.