University Offer Refused Due to my Spoken Communication

I’ll preface this by saying this is not legal advice I am not a lawyer qualified to give you legal advice. I am just a nerd on the Internet who has  researched a lot of law.

What do you describe sounds like it could be discrimination arising from disability (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/15) I wouldn’t worry too much about getting the complaint perfect. I am sceptical about whether the complaint will change anybody’s mind but making it will allow you to move onto the next stage. unfortunately the next stage is threatening to sue.

in practice it’s often after starting a lawsuit that actual serious negotiations start. BeFor you totally freak out please be aware it’s quite often possible to have these cases addressed on the small claims track which is designed to work without lawyers if you can’t afford them.

so if you do Lodge a lawsuit your complaint will have to assert that a list of conditions is satisfied that means a law has been broken. Your complaint to the University should probably be structured in the same way. you want to show them the ingredients of discrimination arising from disability have been satisfied.

broadly that would be:

• you are a disabled person
• they knew you were a disabled person
• they did something unfavourable to you because of something
• that something was a consequence of your disability
• The unfavourable action is not  justified objectively

in order for unfavourable action to be objectively justified it must satisfy the 4 following conditions

• it must be in pursuit of something legitimate
• The action taken must be rationally concerned to the legitimate  aim
• The action taken must be no more unfavourable than necessary to achieve the aim.
• The unfavourable consequences must be outweighed by the benefits.

Strictly speaking for section 15 it’s not legally necessary for you to say what they could’ve done differently in terms of making reasonable adjustments that would’ve helped you attend without it causing an issue.

 however it’s often helpful because it powerfully illustrates the objective justification test isn’t met.

now it sounds like they were concerned you would have issues in group sessions. Perhaps they thought you had a tendency to unreasonably dominate the conversation or to respond rudely to people or in a way that  might be seen as rude or that you would go off on long tangents. Most of these issues could be addressed by having a facilitator for the group sessions   who was used to dealing with you, also adding additional time for group sessions  is also an option

Peter - you may be right in terms of the law. My point is that it may be possible to force a university to register a student. The problem is that teaching involves subjective assessments of competence. If the assessor does not like the student's presentation and writes it up negatively, it is hard to argue. The Tribunal judge was not there, and the assessor says the presentation was not good enough, how do you prove otherwise on the balance of probabilities?

In purely pragmatic terms, I feel it might be better to find a university that is more neurodiversity aware. I have been in a situation where I have had a "marginal" student, and to be honest, I could have written my report up either a pass or a fail, and the university would accept my recommendation. All the Exam Board has is the assessor's report.

This is exactly the case, I do have a huge amount of professional proof of my teaching abilities and also my spoken communication, so this should be easy to prove if necessary 

I don't have any other options as I'm a single mum and can't travel away for university. I am also a current lecturer at university, who have written to Exeter with a letter of support as an excellent teacher and a local college, with over 20 recommendations highlighting my teaching ability and communication on linked in, so I do have a lot of proof

I don't have any other options as I'm a single mum and can't travel away for university. I am also a current lecturer at university, who have written to Exeter with a letter of support as an excellent teacher and a local college, with over 20 recommendations highlighting my teaching ability and communication on linked in, so I do have a lot of proof