The Student Room Group

I think my school caused me to fail my GCSEs

Hi, I’m temporarily out of education for medical reasons and I would like to recount my experience.

To start, I have a neuromuscular condition called ‘meis 2’, this condition causes me to experience agonising pain in my legs and feet if I do ANY sort of walking. So going back to mid February 2023, a week before half term, I experienced a ‘pain spike’ as I like to call it. Basically I could hardly walk without being in pain, (more pain than usual). Because of this, I had to be off school. I was off till after Easter break, (in mid April).

I didn’t receive any work from the school whilst I was experiencing this pain spike. So, when I eventually went back to school, not only had my attendance dropped to like 35%, I was extremely far behind in school work! Baring in mind my GCSEs were around a month away! Because of all this, my mock exams had to be cancelled, and my timetable was reduced. (By this point, I was well enough to use my electronic wheelchair again).


So to put it lightly, I was screwed! I had around 3ish weeks to learn a whole school term of work! (Maths, English literature, English language, combined science, RE, History, food tech and Art). To make things ‘better’, the school told me that I’d only be doing the core subjects for my exams. (English literature and language, maths and combined science). But I STILL had like a month’s worth of school work to catch up on, and was 2 weeks away from my exams!

And to make things worse, my teacher (who knew walking was the cause of my pain) kept telling me to WALK AROUND every time she seen me! So even though I was trying to get into school everyday, I was forced to stay off because of the additional pain my teacher was causing me to have. And even on those days that I was off, they STILL didn’t send me any work to do!

So because of all that, I was forced myself into giving up and just trying my best. Skipping ahead to results day, I basically failed my GCSEs.

Am I in the wrong, or is the school in the wrong? Considering it’s only been a year, can I take the school to court or something?
Reply 1
This kind of happened to me, during school I had quite severe struggles with my mental health, couldn't go to class, eventually started attending a day center for treatment 3 days a week and going to school for 2. They refused to give me work the entire time, COVID came around and I got my results predicted and I only got results for English, English Lit, Maths, Welsh and Art. I got 2 Cs lol.

Granted, there was some element of school refusal with me and I can admit that that was my fault, but that doesn't change the fact that they made 0 effort to give me schoolwork when I was in hospital, despite me repeatedly asking. This also happened to friends I had with physical disabilities.

From my understanding, there isn't much you can actually do about it, I did ask around when I got my results. But don't let this discourage you from trying education again, I'm in college now, have been for 4 years, and I do pretty well in my course, I have AAA predicted and I'm going to uni for nursing in September.

You can find a way to make it work, maybe online college or something like that would be more suitable for your needs? I know open uni does self-paced degrees but I'm unsure about A levels

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