Attendance matters: a guide for disabled students
Guidance for disabled students on the University's attendance expectations, managing absences and accessing additional support.
Attendance expectations
All University of Sheffield students are expected to attend and engage with their studies on a regular basis, as set out in the University Regulations XIV (PDF, 96KB).
Regularly attending teaching sessions is a key component of this. It provides you with structured opportunities to engage with learning material, participate in discussions and receive guidance. This is essential for you to develop the academic knowledge and skills that are core outcomes of the University's courses.
Some University programmes are also accredited by external professional, statutory or regulatory statutory bodies, and may have separate or additional attendance and engagement requirements that you need to meet to complete the course.
Managing absences
As outlined on the University's attendance monitoring pages, if there is a good reason that you will be absent from a teaching session (or a number of 'expected contact points' like lectures, tutorials, labs or supervisory meetings) for a temporary period of time, you must let your school know as soon as possible.
You should use the attendance monitoring system to log the reasons for your absence. You may also need to alert your school. It is a good idea to read through any specific guidance on attendance expectations that your school provides and ask any clarifying questions you have about this as soon as possible. You should be able to find this kind of information on your school's hub or handbook webpages (student login required).
If you miss individual sessions, or are absent from some sessions whilst continuing to attend overall, this is unlikely to be a problem. However, if you repeatedly miss sessions or build up periods of complete absence, the University may contact you to remind you of your attendance and engagement responsibilities, encourage you to re-engage with your studies, and offer you additional support. This contact point gives you the opportunity to reply and discuss your attendance with relevant staff in your department or central University services.
If your attendance does not improve and remains a notable concern, you could be referred through a formal route for action and would be contacted by central services (eg Student Engagement and Progress, International Student Support, Advice and Compliance or PGR Support) with further information about what you need to do to re-engage with studies within specific timeframes.
Additional considerations for disabled students
As a disabled student, you may feel that your ability to attend/engage with your studies will be impacted upon at points. The main reasons for this are:
- The symptoms of your condition temporarily flare-up/worsen
- You need to attend medical appointments associated with the management of a condition
- You encounter a barrier to learning in a specific teaching, learning or assessment activity that you don't have appropriate support in place to overcome
If your ability to attend teaching sessions is occasionally impacted upon for any of these reasons, and you make your school or department aware of this, this is unlikely to be a problem.
If points one or two from the list above are likely to be the case for you during your studies and you choose to access DDSS disability support, it is likely that, subject to your approval, your DDSS adviser will include some information about these circumstances in the 'Disability Impact' section of your Learning Support Plan (LSP). We use this section of your LSP to ensure that the schools/departments you are studying in have a clear statement of the nature of your condition/impairment and its impact on your day-to-day academic life.
If we make reference in this section to why attendance might be challenging for you at points, this is to ensure that staff who deal with attendance/engagement issues have this context.
Your LSP will not recommend, and must not be taken to suggest, that you are allowed to routinely not attend 'in-person' teaching sessions.
If point three from the list above applies to you (ie during your course you encounter a barrier to learning that impacts on your ability to engage with/attend your studies), we'd encourage you to let your department and your DDSS adviser know so that we can work together to address this.
Support for ongoing disability-related attendance challenges
If you are frequently unable to attend and/or engage with your studies for reasons that relate to your impairment/condition, we'd encourage you to raise this directly with your department.
If you are already accessing DDSS, you can also contact your DDSS Adviser to discuss this, so that we can determine if there are any additional ways that we can support you to attend.
If you have not yet accessed DDSS, contact us by email at disability.info@sheffield.ac.uk to begin the process of accessing support.