Special circumstances

Nearly all students will have some kind of special circumstance at some point in their studenthood, ranging from trivial to very serious. It is not possible for the two laboratory managers to deal with all cases, so laboratory supervisors are expected to sort out the vast majority of them. The general rule of thumb is: if the student has been absent from the University for more than a week, then they should contact (initially by email) the appropriate laboratory manager. This is because they are likely to need excuses recording in a range of modules, and maybe will need some advice on how to catch up, etc.. Other circumstances should be dealt with by you directly.

You should be aware that when you give excuses for further extending an already extended deadline, your excuse will last only one more session (normally). Only the laboratory managers can give more time than that. The purpose of this restriction is to enforce the most serious cases of special circumstances to be referred to the appropriate laboratory manager.

This creates one uncommon exception: when a student has had two periods of short absence (with a good reason) and has missed two consecutive laboratories for your module, the first of which was a deadline. They may need to have their excuse on the first session made non-expiring, even though they haven't really had serious special circumstances.

Our general policy in laboratories is to believe all claims from students about their special circumstances. If they have missed a long period they should be asked to complete a sick note and give it to the office, but these don't get passed to the laboratory managers (at the moment) so the student still needs to discuss it with them. All excuses you record are entered in the database, so if a student is abusing the system it will show up.

It is important that you take care to record special circumstances properly, otherwise you will create distress for the student and hassle for yourself and the laboratory managers.

There are 3 places where you will record excuses:

• Attendance column (column 1): Find the sheet corresponding to the laboratory they missed, and write ``E #1'' in the attendance column, and at the bottom of the page write ``#1:'' followed by a brief indication of the reason. Use ``# 2'' for the next excuse recorded on that page, and so on. Usually such excuses are recorded in retrospect, most often in the next laboratory session. So you are changing the cross which was recorded the previous time into this excuse. Sometimes other students will tell you why a student is missing in the laboratory being missed, and occasionally a student will tell you in advance that they will be missing the next session (e.g. for a job interview).

  When a student is given an excuse for not attending, they are automatically given the corresponding extension, unless they somehow managed to meet the deadline in advance of their absence. Similarly, if a student does meet the deadline in advance of the session, they are automatically excused from attending the session.

• Extension column (column 3): here you may excuse a student for not obtaining the extension. This will always be in retrospect, for obvious reasons! Generally you should feel very liberal here: any excuse will be acceptable, as the requirement to ask for the extension is merely psychological.

• Completed by extended deadline column (column 4): here you are excusing a student for not meeting the extended deadline, and giving them (normally) one more session. This is the most serious of excuses, and should be awarded with care. Generally, you decide whether the student's excused absences or other circumstances are a reasonable explanation of them being late. As discussed above, one would not normally give more time here simply because a student is having difficulty with the course.

  If for whatever reason they need more time than just one more session (i.e. you think they should be permitted to complete the work after the excuse expiry date, without penalty) then you will need to refer them to the Laboratory Manager to obtain a non-expiring excuse.

  Finally, as an aid to you, if you give an attendance excuse for a session which was itself the extended deadline for the previous session, the previous session automatically gets given an expiring excuse for not meeting the extended deadline. This would mean that exercise would not be flagged late, as long as the student has now completed it.

  For example, consider the following case.

  Week	Deadline	Extension	Expiry
  	number	to week	at week
  2	1	4	6
  4	2	6	8
  6	3	8	10
  8	4	10	12
  10	5	12	-
  12	-	-	-

  Suppose a student attends in week 2, gets the extension to week 4, but then is ill in week 4. In week 6 they attend, and you excuse their absence for week 4. That will automatically further extend their work for deadline 1 up to the excuse expiry in week 6. So if they have now completed it, they will be okay.