Pregnancy is not a disability (although being a parent often seems
to be). It is though an equal opps issue (and common sense come
to that). A heavily pregnant woman should not be unfairly
disadvantaged. And, like disabled students, she should have an
personal saftey plan for if the fire alarm goes off and they can't
clear the building within 2 and a half minutes.



On 9 Feb 02, at 16:54, Ozcan KONUR wrote:

> Konur, O. (2002) Reasonable adjustments for heavily pregnant higher
> education students taking final examinations under three types of
> legislation, Raws, 8 February 2002.
>
>
> Ms. Crooks wrote on 8 February 2002 that:
> "Our Disabilities Adviser has contacted me regarding 2 students who will be
> 8 months pregnant in May when they sit their exams. They are asking for
> extra time in the exams to allow for the extra toilet breaks they are
> expecting to need. The Disabilities Adviser is unsure about dealing with it
> herself as pregnancy is not a disability. Has anyone come across this
> before? Any ideas on how to proceed?"
>
> The scarcity of the case information as above makes it difficult to answer
> the issues arising from this message properly. However there are three
> different but interlinked issues here: Disability law, higher education law,
> and sex discrimination law.
>
> First relates to the Disability Discrimination Act (1995). Since this Act
> is not applicable to students till September 2003 (for making reasonable
> adjustments) there are no legal obligations for the institution to do
> anything about it now.
>
> However, if the institution has an internally prepared disability policy
> (such as disability statement) then the institution may have obligations to
> consider the case carefully. Having said this pregnancy is not defined as
> 'disability' within the meaning of the DDA but the pregnancy related
> physical and mental disabilities may be defined so. Here incontinence (and
> or depressive illnesses related to pregnancies) may be considered as an
> issue to consider to make reasonable adjustments.
>
> In examination, such as high stake final examinations, there may be two
> options. First option is to defer the exam to a date after the birth, to
> account also for the post-natal depression cases. Second option, is to allow
> for regular breaks negotiated with the student and possible with the advice
> of their GP. Considering the fact that pregnancy is often associated with
> depressive illnesses and disruption of studies and or work of pregnant
> persons, the first option may have a higher priority to enable these
> students to have same opportunity as their peers. It may also possible to
> allow extra time for exams above the breaks depending on the institution's
> exam and disability policies. For example it is known that pregnant students
> may get easily tired and suffer loss of concentration among other pregnancy
> related symptoms. If the same amount of exam time is given to these
> students, it would harm their exam performance substantially. ( an academic
> paper is coming up in the coming months on the examination of disabled
> students in higher education).
>
> Second issue relates to higher education law and particularly with the
> examination procedures. There have been a number of appellate court cases
> which the list members may be familiar with in recent years such as the high
> profile Coggeran case which reached the Court of Appeal level. The close
> reading of these cases suggests that indeed these students' studies are
> disrupted substantially due to their pregnancy and related depressive
> illnesses as well as any other domestic and or external problems. If the
> second option (giving regular breaks to students during the examinations) is
> taken students should be advised properly about institutions' 'mitigating
> circumstances' to be considered by the exam boards. Students need to submit
> such 'mitigating circumstances' to boards within the prescribed time limits
> by the regulations. If the case history of the institution suggests that
> such circumstances have no weight at all, then students should be advised to
> defer their exam to a suitable date when they recovered from their pregnancy
> related illnesses.
>
> Third, this area is regulated by the European Law as well as the domestic
> law, any such breaches would be considered by the county courts under the
> Sex Discrimination Act (1975) and the European Equality Directive which
> applies to students in higher education institutions. If the students were
> given exams without any reasonable adjustments (or their examinations are
> not deferred) these legislation may have been breached since they may have
> been treated less favourable than their peers.
>
> Based on the scarce case information as above, these three dimensions of the
> case should be considered carefully. The competent knowledge of the
> institutional environment would be helpful in considering these issues.
> However, for clarification it should be noted that it matters little what
> the institutional regulations says on these issues but rather how and or to
> what extent they are implemented in the practice by the relevant players as
> the case law shows. For example, an institution may have ideal regulations
> but in practice no body may apply them but rather ad-hoc procedures may be
> used instead.
>
> Hope it helps.
>
> P.s. this message should not be taken as legal advice but rather an helpful
> brief based on the experiences of many other pregnant higher education
> students who went through the same and or similar problems regarding their
> final examinations, as an outreach activity of a four year long research
> project carried out at City University, which has been personally funded.
>
> ________________________________
> Ozcan KONUR
> Postal address: Rehabilitation Resource Centre (Walmsley Building Room
> W223), City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, The United
> Kingdom.
> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
> Research project URL: http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~cx639/index.htm
> Phone: 020 7040 0271
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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Bryan Jones
Disability Support Services Manager
Tel: 020 8411 5367