The University’s attendance monitoring system relies on you demonstrating evidence of attendance by registering your presence in class with your Student ID Card and being proactive about advising your School academic tutor if you have problems. You are responsible for your attendance. The School will send you two reminders about poor attendance; if you fail to respond to these by improving your attendance then a third and final notification will lead to your withdrawal from your programme of study.
From the start of teaching all Schools will check the attendance data from the attendance readers on a weekly basis and use this to identify students with poor attendance. You are expected to attend all your teaching sessions. Where your attendance record indicates that you are not doing so, we will send you an email to your University email account advising you that your attendance is of concern.
You do not need to reply to this email but you do need to ensure you attend all classes and register your attendance with the electronic reader. If you have a personal matter that is impacting on your ability to attend class then you should book an appointment to discuss this with your School’s Academic Tutor.
If your attendance does not improve you will be sent a further email expressing concern and advising that you are in danger of being withdrawn from the University for poor attendance. Finally, if you are still not attending consistently a decision will be made about withdrawing you from the University. In doing this the University will consider your absence records to check if you have notified us of any required absence or have discussed any problems relating to your attendance with your School Academic Tutor. We do not wish to lose students; we wish to support them to complete their studies and we encourage you to discuss any problems with us. However we are obliged to withdraw and report students who are not attending as required and if there is no indication that you are studying on your course then you will be sent a formal letter informing you that you have been withdrawn from the University. This will result in any student loans or bursaries being cancelled.
We will have a record of your absence if you have informed us and will review absence levels as part of the attendance monitoring process. Where students have high levels of absence they may be contacted by your Programme Leader/ Academic advisor to ask if there are any ongoing issues which the University can help with. Where we know you have been absent for a notified reason we will continue to alert you to your poor attendance record because it is important that you consider how this has impacted on your learning and whether you need to seek any help. However we will use the absence information you provide to us to inform decisions about withdrawal from your programme of study; dependent on the length of your absence and the reasons for it, you may be advised it is in your best interests to suspend your studies until such time as you are able to study without interruption.
You will only be warned that you are being withdrawn from your programme of study if you are not attending your classes and do not notify us of the reason why. In this case we have to assume that you no longer wish to study with us.
We are obliged to inform our funding council, SAAS and the UK Border Force/ Home Office about students who have left. It is very important that you attend classes, register your attendance in class and let your School know of any problems you have with attendance.
Yes - All formal notifications emailed to students will be sent to your GCU email.
You should therefore ensure that you check this email account on a regular basis.
Please view the IT Help page for students on information on how you can setup email forwarding from your GCU email account to your personal email, if would so desire.
The University has two attendance policies, one for taught students and one for research students. Both policies can be found on the Student Regulations page.