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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