Appeals to the Academic Board

The Academic Board is an integral part of the governance structure at the University of Melbourne. The Academic Board Regulation provides rules for the University for membership, meetings and procedures of the Academic Board; the accreditation of courses and awarding degrees and other awards; selection, admission and assessment requirements; academic progress and fitness to practice; matters relating to academic integrity; and student appeals arising from grievances, academic misconduct, general misconduct, academic progress, fitness to practice and selection.

The Academic Board comprises of all professors; salaried professorial fellows; deans of faculties; heads of academic departments; heads of schools; and other senior academic and professional staff of the University. It is, indeed, a large body. Fear not however, an appeal to the Academic Board is heard by a small subcommittee of three members, generally chaired by one of the Board's Officers (President, Vice President or Deputy Vice President).

An appeal to the Academic Board is a mechanism to challenge a formal decision made by the University about you and your studies. Not every decision can be appealed. Section 4.2 of the Student Appeals Policy states:

A student or other eligible person (the appellant) may appeal decisions regarding:

1. student academic misconduct;
2. student general misconduct;
3. student grievances, provided the grievance does not involve an alleged breach by staff of the Appropriate Workplace Behaviour Policy;
4. academic progress;
5. statutory decisions;
6. incorrect information or advice given by any academic or administrative staff of the University or which appeared in any publication of the University which has caused hardship to the student;
7. examination outcome in a graduate research course;
8. selection;
9. student fitness to practice;
10. exclusion for a notifiable disease; and
11. student fitness to study.

It is important to understand that an appeal to the Academic Board is not simply a re-hearing of the original issue. In the majority of situations (except for selection appeals and graduate research examination appeals), an appeal to the Academic Board must be based on the grounds outlined in s 4.2 of the Student Appeals Policy. These are:

• a procedural irregularity has occurred (which may include that the student has not received a fair hearing in all the circumstances)
• there is new information that could not reasonably have been provided at the time of the original decision, and that would probably have affected the decision, or any penalty imposed
• the decision was manifestly wrong, and/or
• the penalty imposed was manifestly excessive, inappropriate or not available in the circumstances

An Appeals’ Committee can only meet if one of the listed grounds are identified and met.

An Appeals’ Committee cannot rehear previous matters unless there is a significant justification as to why that previous hearing was compromised in some way. Your appeal to the Academic Board needs to directly engage with the feedback you received from the University and outline the source of any errors you believe occurred with the previous decisions or the decision-making process. Throughout your submission you must make clear, well-structured arguments, substantiate your assertions, and state the outcome that you seek, or your appeal to the Academic Board may be deemed to not meet grounds and be disallowed without a hearing.

Appeals to the Academic Board are written submissions - called a "Notice of Appeal". Before submitting a Notice of Appeal, you must have attempted to resolve the issue through the applicable University process.

Our templates can help you make a start on the submission. Include all the necessary information and draft an argument based on the ground/s discussed above. We have two templates for Appeals to the Academic Board:

• if you are appealing a Course Academic Progress Committee (CAPC) or 'Show Cause' decision, please use this template.
• for all other issues, please use this template.

We suggest you get in touch with us to read over your draft before you submit it to the University. You can contact us here. Make sure to attach the draft and all the relevant documents related to this issue, so we get the full picture and can give you meaningful feedback and advice.

Give us time. Appeals are usually complex and require a bit of input so contact us as soon as you know that you wish to lodge an appeal.

As discussed above, you can only submit an Appeal to the Academic Board if you have exhausted all the other steps in the University process relevant to your situation and it is based on one of the grounds in the Student Appeals Policy.

A procedural irregularity is concerned with the University’s published policies and procedures.

There are three aspects to basing your argument on this ground.

First, you need to locate the policy/policies that relate to your circumstances and very clearly articulate what has gone wrong.

Secondly, you need to illustrate how this procedural irregularity has caused you detriment.

Thirdly, you need to explain how the previous decision made by the University about this matter has been unfair, that is, the ways in which they have failed to redress the issue.

So, in effect, ‘a procedural irregularity that has contributed to an injustice having occurred’, which as the grounds also states, includes an unfair hearing.

The ground of ‘new information’ is concerned with submitting information that was not included in the previous steps of the University process relevant to your situation. This information must meet specific criteria.

Firstly, the documentation you are submitting must probably (that is, more than just possibly) affect the decision made. The information cannot be trivial and must influence the decision in question considerably, and you must explain your rationale for why this is so when you submit it through an Appeal to the Academic Board.

Secondly, it is essential that the information submitted could not have reasonably been provided at an earlier stage. In this sense, it’s not just about if the particular facts were known to the committee, but also whether proof of these factors couldn’t reasonably have been provided at the previous stages in the process. You will need to show the circumstances that prevented this documentation from being provided when the initial decision makers considered your case.

The ground that the decision was manifestly wrong is not about whether you think the decision is the wrong one — of course you do, that’s why you want to appeal to the Academic Board.

Instead, this requires you to demonstrate how the decision may be the wrong interpretation or be factually wrong.

If the interpretation of the original decisionmaker is wrong, it means it deviates from the usual process or policy; or is unacceptable according to principles that policy represents. It’s not about how you feel about the decision, but how the decision is objectively wrong when considering the applicable policy or whether all the facts of the matter were taken into consideration when the decision was made.

If the original decision maker made their decision based on incorrect information (that is, relied on factually wrong information), then it is important to explain what this incorrect information is. It is also important to refer to documentation that verifies the correct information and shows how having regard to the correct information would’ve changed the original outcome.

Decisions made by the University often have negative ramifications for those impacted by them and can feel incredibly excessive. However, this factor is not sufficient to argue this ground. This ground is concerned with how the impact of a decision has been excessive on you, in particular. In this sense, you must have specific circumstances that would make the impact excessive. In your appeal to the Academic Board, you must explain your circumstances and articulate how, given your situation, this specific outcome is excessive. For example, having your enrolment terminated would be difficult for anyone, so you need to identify what effect this particular outcome will have on you specifically that suggests the decision is excessive.

Appeals to the Academic Board are due 20 business days from the day you received the decision you wish to appeal.

To establish the applicable deadline for your circumstance, exclude weekends, the end-of-year shutdown period (if applicable), and any public holidays observed by the University (see here for a full list of dates).

The date on the email will be considered day zero and the next day, day one. So, for example, if your outcome notice email is dated Monday 12 December (day zero), then the first day of counting will begin on Tuesday 13 December (day one). If there is a discrepancy between the email date stamp and the date on the formal outcome notice (e.g. a letter attached as a pdf), the email date stamp is considered day zero (this is why it’s important to send us all the email correspondence when you get in touch with us for help).

Working days at the University are calculated on the days the University is ‘open for business’ (not just when campus might be accessible). This means working days do not include weekends and some public holidays, so you need to calculate them carefully. Not all public holidays are University holidays, so check the University's key dates.

If you get an email from the University indicating you have a certain amount of ‘working days’ to respond, then you can count the next working day as your Day 1 and count on from there. This means that if you get an email on a Friday giving you ‘five working days’ to reply, then you would count the following Monday as Day 1 (unless that Monday was a University holiday).

So, if you get an email on Friday 22 December 2023 and you have ‘five working days’ to respond, your Day 1 will not be until Tuesday 2 January 2024 and your fifth working day would fall on Monday 8 January 2024.

You can submit your appeal here.

Nope.

When you lodge your notice of appeal, it will be considered to see if it discloses sufficient merit to proceed to a hearing. Different appeals are assessed against different criteria set out in different University Regulations.

The University Secretary will consider appeals relating to student general misconduct, student fitness to study, or exclusion for a notifiable disease which will be considered in accordance with the provisions of the Vice-Chancellor Regulation.

All other types of appeals under the Student Appeals Policy will be considered by the Academic Secretary under the Academic Board Regulation.

Your notice of appeal, once lodged, should be assessed within ten (10) University business days and a decision made "as soon as reasonably practicable" (yes, there's no actual deadline - so it can be quite a wait).

If it’s determined that your appeal lacks merit, you will be notified of an intention to disallow your appeal and the reason for the proposed disallowance. You then have 5 University business days to submit any further information relevant to your appeal. If you fail to provide more information in that five (5) University business days window - the appeal will be disallowed and closed. So, you need to be vigilant. Basically, the University can take as long as they need to assess your appeal, but if they decide to disallow your appeal, then you have strictly 5 University business days to argue why it should be heard.

If you need to provide more information to argue your appeal has sufficient merit to be heard - get in touch with us ASAP - because five working days is not much time!

If the Academic Board is satisfied you have demonstrated grounds for an Appeal, then an appeal hearing will be scheduled with the Academic Board Appeals Committee. You should be sent the Appeal Hearing Papers that include a meeting agenda containing the time and date of the hearing and your appeal submission.

You will be required to attend to present your appeal to the Academic Board. You can take a support person to the hearing.

Appeals to the Academic Board hearings are set down for approximately 25 minutes, however they may be shorter or longer. They will be attended by three members of the Academic Board who are not from your faculty.

If your appeal to the Academic Board is regarding a CAPC, Special Consideration or an Assessment Dispute, a representative from the faculty will also be in attendance to answer any questions the Appeals Committee may have regarding the CAPC decision. However, this faculty member does not form part of the decision-making committee.

The outcome from the appeal to the Academic Board hearing will be provided to you in writing within 5 working days. The email will be sent to your student email if you are a current student.

The Academic Board is the final decision-making body within the University. There are external avenues that you may wish to consider pursuing your issue if you’re dissatisfied with the University’s handling of your appeal. One of these is the National Student Ombudsman (NSO). The NSO is an external, free and independent service that works with students and higher education providers across Australia to resolve complaints. They do have considerable powers to investigate complaints and assess whether any decisions taken by a higher education provider are lawful, fair, and reasonable. The NSO's jurisdiction includes complaints about being denied an appeal to the Academic Board.

The Advocacy Service can guide you through the process of making your own complaint, or in some circumstances, we can lodge a complaint on your behalf. Please review our information on how we can help you make a complaint with the NSO here.

Please get in touch with us to discuss how we can help.