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Mitigating Circumstances in my exams, can I get help?

Hi all.

Bit of an issue here. Unfortunately, my mum and sister had to be in A&E the day/night before my Economics AS exam this morning. This was because of the unfortunate continued self harm by my sister that got so serious that it became life threatening. There is no point discussing the reasons for this as it would take up more than 1 post!

This, along with the domestic family issues that come about as a result of this self harm by my sister have caused me to lose my focus recently in terms of revision and sitting the exams. I realise it is hard for others to understand this, but revising the circular flow of income while your sister is bleeding to death is damn hard!

As a result today's exam was a bit of a disaster. I just had no focus and couldn't structure my thoughts.

I was wondering as to whether the exam board would take these factors into consideration? I am perfectly happy to retake if need be, but many teachers believe I should be applying to some high end universities, possibly even Oxford, and I do not believe they would be so understanding when they have to go through thousands of applications.

Thanks for any opinions.
Reply 1
Original post by jw297
Hi all.

Bit of an issue here. Unfortunately, my mum and sister had to be in A&E the day/night before my Economics AS exam this morning. This was because of the unfortunate continued self harm by my sister that got so serious that it became life threatening. There is no point discussing the reasons for this as it would take up more than 1 post!

This, along with the domestic family issues that come about as a result of this self harm by my sister have caused me to lose my focus recently in terms of revision and sitting the exams. I realise it is hard for others to understand this, but revising the circular flow of income while your sister is bleeding to death is damn hard!

As a result today's exam was a bit of a disaster. I just had no focus and couldn't structure my thoughts.

I was wondering as to whether the exam board would take these factors into consideration? I am perfectly happy to retake if need be, but many teachers believe I should be applying to some high end universities, possibly even Oxford, and I do not believe they would be so understanding when they have to go through thousands of applications.

Thanks for any opinions.


You need to go and talk to your exams officer, he/she should be able to apply for special consideration, but it will only give you an extra 3% or so. The rules are all here,
http://www.jcq.org.uk/attachments/published/538/AA%20regs%202011-2012%20edited%2011102011.pdf starting on p69
Reply 2
I'm pretty sure you can get a certain amount of marks extra for those circumstances. Best course of action would be explaining all of this to your exams officer (whoever deals with exam issues), and they can typically let the exam board know about your circumstances.
Sorry about your mum and sister :colondollar:

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