Call for uniform right to appeal

PhD students needa proper complaints procedure, says Simeon Underwood. The higher reaches of academic endeavour demand the highest standards of administrative justice. Yet where PhD students meet up with examination results they find they are victims of the vagaries in local law on appeals procedures. There is no central data on them and there is no sectorwide case law.

There is a voluntary code of practice which the old universities follow, the result of the Reynolds report in the mid-1980s. Many new universities use a procedure issued by their former regulatory body.

There are three particularly thorny issues that must be addressed. First, at some universities students are not allowed to appeal on the grounds of inadequate supervision. The original Reynolds report ruled such appeals out, saying that a student should raise problems over supervision during the registration period. The problem is that students may have no cause to think that their supervision was inadequate until they have failed.

A year later the Reynolds report was changed. Yet the revision contains a torturous double negative which was probably intended to keep appeals to a minimum: ". . . alleged inadequacy of supervisory or other arrangements during the period of study should not constitute grounds of appeal unless there are exceptional reasons for it not having come to light until after the examination . . . " But this revision never made it into the regulations of several old universities. Likewise, although the Committee for National Academic Awards, which governed the polytechnics, drew up its procedures after both Reynolds reports had been published, it followed the first formulation.

Even more difficult to address is the issue of whether a student can question an examiner's academic judgement. Reynolds admitted appeals if "there is evidence of prejudice or of bias or of inadequate assessment on the part of one or more of the examiners" - a line which allows a student to question the academic judgement of examiners to an extent which is unheard of elsewhere in the sector. The CNAA went less far, allowing appeals for "unfair or improper assessment" but saying that "candidates may not otherwise challenge the academic judgement of the examiners".

The Reynolds line on academic judgement can be justified. The subject matter of a PhD is highly specialised; the PhD exam is the only one in which the student is expected to know as much about the subject as the examiners.

Yet it is always going to be difficult for a student to provide evidence which will prove bias. Moreover, an appeal of this kind challenges the professional integrity of the examiner - a very serious matter indeed.

Third, students who appeal are in the strange position of complaining to the very people they are complaining about. Most universities operate a prima facie system to decide whether or not an appeal will be heard. This quickly screens out frivolous appeals and resolves overwhelmingly strong appeals. But some people feel it is open to abuse. It is the university that decides who should hear the appeal and even who may accompany the student to the appeal meeting. And it is the university that decides the outcome.

Moreover, the outcome reflects the academic values of the academics hearing the appeal; and these can be highly variable. In a Lancaster University role-play case study we gave the same case to five groups, who came to five different conclusions, ranging from rejecting the appeal to upholding it on terms which amounted to a grovelling admission of failure and incompetence by the university.

The only further recourse for the student is the very expensive and often frustrating route of going to the Visitor or to judicial review. The Visitor is an honorific role often delegated to the Privy Council Office or the Lord Chancellor. The Nolan committee, in its second report on standards in public life, stated that the visitorial system of hearing appeals is "not by any means perfect". However, it does provide students with an independent judgment on university decisions. Nolan recommends that all higher education institutions should establish a right of appeal to an independent body.

Ultimately, these three issues raise the fundamental question of whether local law is appropriate for this area or whether greater consistency is needed, for example in the form of a common appeals procedure for all institutions which bridges the gaps between Reynolds and the CNAA. Unfortunately, this question may lie outside the terms of reference of the working party studying the issue.

This working party was set up by the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals. Its chair is Clive Booth, vice chancellor of Oxford Brookes University.

There is a possible solution. The Nolan committee recommended an independent appeal body which would address appeals against the academic judgement of the examiners. Such a body would assure the sector's ethical and professional credibility in a particularly crucial and visible area, while at the same time implementing Nolan in a way which is controlled rather than indiscriminate.

Simeon Underwood is a writer and course tutor for the Lancaster University Unit for Innovation in Higher Education.