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  • University admissions disability discrimination appeal for 17 year old F/T college student - is Legal Aid available?

    My daughter has recently been rejected from a performing arts university after she applied to a degree course. She has diagnoses of Autism and Dyspraxia and an EHCP which I made the University aware of in various emails about her application over the last 12 months. Her disabilities are also recorded on her UCAS form.

    The final stage of the admissions process was an in-person audition and interview which was a disaster as her anxiety levels were off the scale, she made mistakes (despite being a superb musician and singer), the questions asked were not Autism and Dyspraxia friendly (they asked abstract, open questions and she felt that they were trying to catch her out) and she left after having a meltdown. It’s a heart-breaking situation for her.

    I believe that the University have broken the Equality Act (2010) by failing in their anticipatory duty to offer reasonable adjustments in the audition, as best practice for interviewing Autistic/Dyspraxic candidates has not been applied in any form to the audition.

    I have years of experience fighting battles for diagnoses, EHCP, transport and many other barriers as you might imagine a SEND parent has. I am currently looking at appealing against the University decision and it occurred to me that there might be specialist solicitors out there that could help me.

    Before I start this battle on my own, can anyone advise if this is the sort of situation that a specialist solicitor would take on and if so, is it possible to get legal aid, and if so would that be for help with dealing with the university appeals process or only if we were to proceed to County Court?

    Thanks!

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  • How can I request a change to the type of assessment in a University admission audition as a reasonable adjustment due to disability?

    I am looking at a possible outcome for a performing arts University admissions appeal for my daughter, if it is allowed.

    The University appeals policy states if an appeal is upheld there will be one of 4 outcomes:

    1.An apology

    2.Another audition without prejudice

    3.Conditional offer

    4.Offer

    The best I can hope for is another audition but I feel that this puts my daughter in the same situation, only this time around, with adjustments. It's highly likely that she will still have extreme anxiety and there's every chance she may fail again as a result of her disability.

    Would I be able to request a different, less stressful way of them testing her competence as she's being denied her chance to prove herself through no fault of her own? It seems so unfair.

    I also feel uncomfortable about another audition ‘without prejudice’ which appears to be totally reliant on them being fair. Surely this could just be a case of ‘paying lip service’ and only auditioning her again to get themselves out of the discrimination complaint and then still rejecting her as they don’t want her as her parents have complained, and we may be seen as ‘difficult’

    There really isn’t anyone to police what they do and say behind closed doors with admissions problems as the OIA don’t cover that process.

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