What are mitigating circumstances?

Please visit our Study at King's webpages for the latest guidance on mitigating circumstances for Undergraduate and Postgraduate students.

• Affect your ability to study for, prepare and submit an assessed piece of work by a set deadline.

• Affect your ability to attend an exam, class or lab assessment on a date set by your department.

The key difference between mitigating circumstances and Personalised Assessment Arrangements (PAA) is whether the circumstances affecting your academic performance are predictable and can be anticipated well in advance.

Students with a long-term health condition or learning disability are usually able to predict when or how their circumstances will impact their ability to complete assessments. As such, by applying for PAA they can, for example, be granted more time/resources to submit coursework or attend an exam. For more detailed articles about PAA, please visit the Assessment section of Student Services Online and click on the 'Personalised Assessment Arrangements' sub-section.

In contrast, when a student experiences an unexpected event that couldn’t have been planned for nor controlled, then they can apply for mitigating circumstances. Our article Evidence to support your mitigating circumstances application provides a list of example situations that would typically be considered acceptable mitigating circumstances.

The examples are not exhaustive, however, and the university will assess each request individually to account for the specific circumstances (or combination of them) and the evidence provided.