Anxiety issues pgce fail unfair

So I have posted his before. My sister was failed from the pgce after she had become very stressed on one of her placements. It was her first class she was teaching herself and very poor behaved. The constant negative feedback from her class teacher got too much and the day before her observation she emailed her class teacher to raise her concerns about how she was feeling stressed . The teacher raised this to the head teacher. The head teacher then observed the lesson which increased my sisters worries and lead to a poor performance. She was on her final placement and recieved a fail. The uni said she had no medical evidence of anxiety and they denied that she wasn't given enough support. There were no TAs in the class who were very badly behaved. It's been 2.5yrs now but can my sis still do something about this legally? She worked really hard and passed all her placements uptill his point and seems unfair and harsh that she wasn't allowed to complete.

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No she really wasn't stressed at the work of being a teacher it was that one particular class that was horrendous like she said they behaved like animals and it wasn't fair to be assessed with them and she recieved no Ta support at all.

The thing is that I advised her to talk to her teacher about being stressed because when I had a time at university when I was struggling I had to tell my tutor which was difficult but they supported me when I went to Doctor and got evidence of anxiety even though it was not a life long thing.

But yea it's hard for me to separate my sis and mine experience because I gave her the advice so kinda thought that was really wrong judgement on my part which made her fail... so I guess I will need to get over it somehow to be able to go into teaching with a clear conscious. It probably doesn't make sense but it's because we are really close.

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I can see where the university is coming from. Teaching/PGCE is very high stress and that is why so much emphasis is placed on making sure that the people doing them are resilient and have good coping mechanisms. Having anxiety is a medical condition and should be getting diagnosed/treated by a doctor.

Ultimately they need to decide if a student is struggling with the day to day stress of being a teacher or is suffering from anxiety, a medical condition. In the absence of any form of medical evidence of anxiety, I can see why they would decide on the former.

I imagine the view most of them take is that if your sister is unable to cope with the stress of being a teacher, they may have done her a favour by now allowing her to become one, for her own health and sanity. There are plenty of teachers who passed with flying colours who are suffering from work related stress and other such issues.

Also, you've made several threads on here over the past couple of days in relation to your teaching and your sister's. I think you really need to separate the two events as her history with teaching has nothing to do with any future you may have in teaching and ultimately might set you up to fail.

Hi yea but honestly like I have said my sis doesn't suffer from anxiety it was just the test she was worried about.

I really don't know how to stop blaming myself for this.

It's made me not go into teaching when that's one of the only career options I had.

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I agree with what Elivercury said about you will find a PGCE too difficult I think in places. If you are blaming yourself about this and it is clearly not your fault I think this may severely effect your teaching in a Secondary School. You are clearly an individual who has great concern for others and worries about things you may do and may have done. That is a good quality, but for teaching that will kill you. 100 similar situations where what you say or do will effect a student positively or negatively will happen every week. If you hang on to every little thing like this you will just end up very depressed and anxious. This is one of those professions you just have to say confidently, "it is done" and move on. Then not think about it again.

So I have posted his before. My sister was failed from the pgce after she had become very stressed on one of her placements. It was her first class she was teaching herself and very poor behaved. The constant negative feedback from her class teacher got too much and the day before her observation she emailed her class teacher to raise her concerns about how she was feeling stressed . The teacher raised this to the head teacher. The head teacher then observed the lesson which increased my sisters worries and lead to a poor performance. She was on her final placement and recieved a fail. The uni said she had no medical evidence of anxiety and they denied that she wasn't given enough support. There were no TAs in the class who were very badly behaved. It's been 2.5yrs now but can my sis still do something about this legally? She worked really hard and passed all her placements uptill his point and seems unfair and harsh that she wasn't allowed to complete.

Posted from TSR Mobile

I can see where the university is coming from. Teaching/PGCE is very high stress and that is why so much emphasis is placed on making sure that the people doing them are resilient and have good coping mechanisms. Having anxiety is a medical condition and should be getting diagnosed/treated by a doctor.

Ultimately they need to decide if a student is struggling with the day to day stress of being a teacher or is suffering from anxiety, a medical condition. In the absence of any form of medical evidence of anxiety, I can see why they would decide on the former.

I imagine the view most of them take is that if your sister is unable to cope with the stress of being a teacher, they may have done her a favour by now allowing her to become one, for her own health and sanity. There are plenty of teachers who passed with flying colours who are suffering from work related stress and other such issues.

Also, you've made several threads on here over the past couple of days in relation to your teaching and your sister's. I think you really need to separate the two events as her history with teaching has nothing to do with any future you may have in teaching and ultimately might set you up to fail.

I'm obviously not familiar with her situation but I had to learn that not all universities have their students best interests at heart. I was very ill because I was bullied on placement and they still tried to make me responsible for the situation. I had medical evidence too but they claimed that I just 'couldn't deal with the stress'. Teaching is a very stressful profession but some schools don't treat their trainees fairly and if you're in that kind of environment, it isn't really possible for you to find out whether or not teaching is right for you.

I suspect the universities have the interests of future students that you may teach, at heart. I don't wish to be unsympathetic but it sounds from your last post that you didn't seek medical evidence or report matters to your university at a very late stage when you were failing. In this situation they do not necessarily know if it is the chicken or the egg - did you get ill because you were doing poorly or did you do poorly because you were ill. So they will look at which came first and make a judgement in order to determine whether you are capable of becoming a qualified teacher.

Likewise there can also be a range of interpretation over what bullying and unsupportive looks like from a mentor. Ultimately I have no idea what happened in your case, any more than the OP's sister's, but the university has to make difficult decisions and will do so based on the evidence at hand.

To provide an anecdotal scenario (non-teaching) which I am familiar and know the details of - someone I know experienced multiple bouts of illness. They took several days off and went to the hospital - who concluded they were fine - and then went back into work. Their work's policy was that they should provide a medical note if they are off over X time. As they did not provide a medical note and were on their probation, they were dismissed. They then proceeded to go to the hospital and get a note in retrospect and try to submit it to get the dismissal overturned, it was not.

Do you feel the work was unfair in this instance? I personally do not, they ignored the policy and providing a note written after the fact is poor evidence.

I reported the problems with bullying very early on but the university didn't do anything about it. They basically told me to just 'get on with it' and I did even though I came home crying almost every night because of the way I was treated at the school. I was in school five days a week and after the school had reacted very negatively when I asked for some time off for a job interview, I was too scared to take any more time off but I made a doctor's appointment during half term and provided both the school and the uni with evidence.

You aren't familiar with the situation so you have no way of knowing if the university made the right decision. My school didn't even provide the basic training they were supposed to provide and I was treated very disrespectfully by my mentor and another teacher.

I don't know enough about the health situation of the person you mentioned to say whether or not their work was unfair. If they went to the hospital they were most likely hoping to get medical help and evidence so it may not have been as simple as 'ignoring a policy' but I really don't know enough about it to make a judgement.