Is a student entitled to sue over a poor mark?

Great Debates
21

Being most of the way through the British university system at the moment I thought I’d whack in my 2p…

A girl I went out with over the summer is studying law this year, and is frantically applying to almost every law firm on the planet to gain a training position for next year.

The demand for these places is phenomenal - loads more applicants than places (especially for the “good” firms). As such, it can often come down to something as trivial as your A-level latin results as to whether you are gonna have a career as a lawyer or not.

Add to this the increasing competition for university places (which are based on A-level results) and a bad fail really does not help your prospects, particularaly if you want to head for Oxbridge.

What I do think strange about this case is that the girl in question was a straight-A latin student all through school (won the latin prize every year etc) and then went down to a “U” (ungraded). That is a huge drop! I can’t believe that the teaching was so bad that she went from A to Fail in just a year…

Most students here take mock exams in the first term of the upper 6th, so assuming she did OK in the mock she would have had to go downhill in the space of about 6 months!

The other possibility is that the paper was a shocker, but (although some others did fail) you would expect the whole class to have trouble (dunno if that was the case).

She may have just had a 'mare on the day (pressure etc) but that’s no excuse to sue the school…

But then, if you are daft enough to spend all that money on a private education I guess you will want results whatever…

– Quirm

22

According to the article, she is currently a student at Exeter University, so the bad Latin grade apparently didn’t affect her admission there. This leads me to believe that any sort of negative chain reaction was nipped in the bud. I might be more supportive of her claim had she been denied entrance to university on account of the failing grade.

Quirm says that a bad grade could affect a job in a law firm, but also mentions that part of it is the increasing competition for university places – again, she is already at a university. This is the sort of thing an applicant might use in an interview or application to her advantage – how she overcame the problem of a single bad grade and went on to thrive at university.

I’m cynical enough to wonder whether she feels that bringing suit, whether she wins or loses, will put her in the public eye, and thus make her “name recognition” factor that much higher when she starts applying for jobs.

23

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/newsid_1573000/1573033.stm

The above link should give a few more details on the story. Now, prepare to yawn:

A-levels in England are usually taken at the end of a student’s school career (age 18), and are the most common route to university entrance. Most students will have university places offered to them conditional upon their A-level marks based on predicted grades, and interviews with their preferred universities. If a student fails to achieve their conditional marks, they may still get into their university of choice (rare), or they may make the grade for their 2nd or 3rd choice institution. OTOH, they may enter the “clearing” system, where all untaken university places are advertised int he press, and it’s a question of ringing round and finding a subject or an institution that will take them. I know several people who have entered very interesting careers this way, having previously been unaware of the vast variety of degree level courses available. They failed to get onto a French course, but went to do Swedish and Ecology, for example.

Apologies for the dullness of the above for those who are familiar with the system anyway, but it does go to show that A-level marks are not the be-all and end-all of an academic career. We don’t know whether the student in question had an offer to go to a respected law course and failed to get her place because of the failure of her teacher/school. However, even if that were the case, she can still become a lawyer if her heart’s set upon it because you do not need an undergraduate law degree to become a lawyer. You can study law as a post graduate subject (1 year full-time) before going on to do the same professional courses as anyone who studied law as an undergraduate degree. Ask me - I’m doing it! (well, part-time)…

As for the quality of the teaching, the BBC article above points to an extra exam that the students were not told about. Even with their existing skills, perhaps it was impossible to get a decent grade without sitting that exam. I also wondered whether the teacher taught the wrong syllabus. I remember a story I saw at result-time (I did google for it, but no luck) about a class of students who sat down for their English Literature A-level paper, full of knowledge about Hamlet, only to be faced with questions about King Lear. The English system has exams set by several different examining boards, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a school may enter their students for a Latin exam set by the Cambridge examining board, but for the teacher to teach the syllabus for the Oxford examining board (oops). These may have completely different requirements in terms of materials and coursework-exam balance.

All that said, I fall into the “yes, but” camp. The school has manifestly failed to deliver it side of a contract. However, the demands relating to future earnings are patently silly, given that there is nothing preventing the young Miss from following her dream all the way to a top City firm. She can even turn the A-level debacle into a useful interview anecdote about overcoming a problem, if she retakes the course at some point. Oddly, they often DO look at things like A-level results when handing out training contracts, but they also look at a satchel-load of other things too, hence the exhaustive interviewing process that lasts many years-ahem-days…

And, she now has the chance to avoid becoming a lawyer, if she likes :slight_smile:

Ooh, what a long and dull first post. Forgive me. I will now go and be interesting for the weekend.

Embra

24

I s’pose Exeter could charitably be thus termed… :smiley:

Not quite sure how happy I’d be knowing I’d spent £120,000 to get there, though… :slight_smile:
– Quirm

25

Del, I said “which” program. For all I know, and a Quirm indicates, Exeter University could be the Dr. Moe’s Shoe Store and Liberal Arts College of the English educational system.
And, trust me, in the law the school you attend makes a huge difference, at least in the U.S. I have a very good friend who graduated 2nd in her class from a law school here with a poor reputation. She couldn’t even get interviews with the “top-flight” law schools.

Sua

26

Aha, the plot thickens. It seems Exeter is not exactly a top tier University (thanks Quirm). I have looked at a few articles online, but have seen no mention of our friend Kate being denied a place at another university. I’m curious as whether she was kept out of her #1 choice because of the Latin grade.

Sua, since I occasionally schmooze with the folks over at our law school admissions office, I’m curious to know what kind of program your friend was interested in at the top flight schools. Was she looking at an LLM? I’m wondering this because some lip service is paid to the idea that JD students with excellent grades and recommendations from, uh, slightly less prestigious law schools have a decent chance of being accepted for LLM and JSD studies. But, I am the first to admit I don’t know how often that works out in practice. I suspect it’s not quite as hopeful as the admissions materials lead one to believe.

To sort of save this from being a complete hijack (probably too late), I’m also wondering what a university would say if asked to testify in this case. Would an Oxford school, for example, go on record as saying the failing grade was the reason the student wasn’t admitted? I’m not speaking officially, of course, but my general sense is that as an American university we probably wouldn’t spell it out like that, and would only state that many factors, including final exam grades, go into this decision.

27

Del, I screwed up. I meant to type “top-flight law firms”, not schools.
In my friend’s case, it wasn’t grades, but a misunderstanding of the heierarchical nature of the legal profession. The school with the poor reputation offered her a good scholarship, so she accepted. Penny-wise and pound-foolish, it turned out to be. I actually got accepted at the same school a few years later, with a full scholarship. Fortunately, she warned me away.

Sua

28

Oh! Ok then, I see what you mean. I have a friend who was in a similar situation, but I swear, I am almost convinced that he went to his crappy grad school by mistake, because it has a name that is similar to a very highly regarded grad school. Some day, I will get enough drinks in me to screw my courage to the sticking place and ask him “So, did you intend to go to school X, or was that all a bad misunderstanding?”

29

Exeter ranks 37th and 40th in the recent Financial Times and The Times league tables:

http://specials.ft.com/universities2001/FT3HLLAN6LC.html

News UK<%U

It’s actually not a bad place to study (I’ve been told), but I would be surprised if it produced many top-flight legal minds…

It strikes me that a straight-A student at a fee-paying public school would perhaps expect to gain a place at a university rather higher than 40th place.

This is very true - I have a number of mates doing just that (and it is often the preferred way of going about becoming a lawyer, as your undergraduate degree will give you more strings to your future legal bow).

However, if you are determined to aim high the better the uni you attend (even as an undergrad) the greater your earning power. Sounds kinda harsh, but I fear that is simply the way the world works… The stats for this are probably around somewhere, but I’m not the best person to analyse 'em! (So I guess that last part is basically just conjecture).

The pertinant information required would seem to be:

  1. was Exeter her first choice?

  2. if it wasn’t, did the failure in Latin prevent acceptance by her first choice uni?

  3. do students from this girl’s first-choice university (again, assuming Exeter wasn’t it) have more success entering the legal profession than those at Exeter?

I guess that is what any potential legal action would be based upon…?

– Quirm

30

Something smells here, a 3 year A level student should be able to bullshit her way to a passing grade on a exam. I am taking German and am in my 3rd year. From what I have been told the first 3 years deal heavily with grammar, conjugation, and limited vocabulary. The 4th year is mostly increasing your vocabulary. I just don’t see how they couldn’t write a paper that didn’t recieve a passing grade.

31

If she wins will that mean schools have to get insurance and charge more ?

If she thinks she is so smart why didn’t she just take the entrance test for oxbridge ( you actually don’t need any qualifications at all if you can pass the test ).

We have a very odd system in the UK where a lawyer must first get ‘trained’ at a law firm before they can practice law, this is a way of keeping law fees high.

Its really terrible that all these posh kids can’t get to become lawyers… kind of like… life is not fair… even though mummy and daddy pay lots of money.

32

If I recall correctly, they got rid of the Oxford entrance test a few years ago.

Now both Oxford and Cambridge rely pretty much on A-levels for entrance decisions.

– Quirm

33

I was talking to an ACTUAL TEACHER on Friday, and he informed me that the examination boards in England have been rationalised quite a bit, in that there are now only about 3 of them. So the chance of being taught from one syllabus while being entered for another should be minimised. However, I looked up one of the syllabus lists for Latin A-Level. Three papers should be taken, in a combination of Literature+Unseen translation+Comprehension/Interpretation or Lit(1)+Lit(2)+Unseen translation. If the students were prepared for the literature paper(s) using the wrong texts they could be pretty much stuck, no matter how good they were at the language elements. Not to mention the “missing” exam. Mind you, as someone pointed out, a mock exam (on which her predicted A-grade would have been based) should have shown up that something was wrong. The only thing I can think of is that mock exams are set by teachers, not by external agencies. If the latin teacher was REALLY incompetent, the mock exam may have been based on all his mistakes…

To be honest, I’m not particularly sorry for the girl. Even if she had got an A in Latin, she would probably still have struggled to get into an Oxbridge college to study law with AAB results (I’m assuming that she/her school/her parents think that this is where she was going before the Latin debacle). I had a complete failure of an interview in 1990 to study the same subject, and the other interviewees were all studying at least 4 A-levels (not counting the pretend-subject General Studies), with predicted A-grades. And not all of them succeeded. (Not to mention the fact that I was a know-nothing with an interview technique like a goldfish: mouth opens, no sound emitted, everything forgotten within 2 seconds…).

Better for her to get on with her current course and do as well as she can in it, and then see where it goes. Personally, doing an undergraduate history degree was a much better decision that doing law…

embra

34

Another example of American superiority! Here in the U.S., we manage to keep law fees high without the need for in-firm training before we can practice. :smiley:

Actually, if anything, I think that the in-firm training period lowers law fees. The apprentices get paid relatively litte. Over here, Canada has a similar system to Britain’s, and many top law graduates are migrating to the U.S., where they can earn triple or more what they could in the U.S. their first year (we actually have five such people in my office).

Sua

35

For all intents and purposes, a law (J.D.) graduate DOES need in-firm training prior to practice. Most American law schools teach virtually nothing of the “nuts and bolts” of doing law. It’s very easy to graduate from law school without ever having been taught (in class, at least) how to file a complaint, how to prepare an affidavit, or any of those boring mechanical things that are part and parcel of being a lawyer. No, those things (boring as they are) are learned during summer internships and the first year of employment (and, occasionally, through clinical programs).

So what we’ve managed to do in the United States is make legal training longer (and thus more expensive, which almost has to to raise fees), without eliminating the need for an “apprenticeship” period, at least in practice if not in law.

36

True enough, Kelly.

37

I was kind of wondering the opposite. Getting a reputation for throwing out ify breach-of-contract suits doesn’t seem like that great of an idea if you’re marginal to begin with. I sure as hell wouldn’t give her a job offer or enter any kind of contract.

38

That’s what I’m thinking…at least here in the states, I’d say about 75% of what you are taught each year is review of what you learned in the years before. In my high school, if you got an A on your second year of a foreign language you should have been proficient enough to read about anything modern in that language and understand it (with a little help from a dictionary), an A in the third year meant you were effectively fluent in the language, and the 4th year courses were basically literature and history classes in that language, with some reading of more archaic versions of that language. I could see a formerly straight-A student getting the equivalent of a C or so, but completely failing the exam? Smells fishy.

39

Just been re-reading the BBC news article…

I guess if you are not told that there is to be a third paper then you might have grounds for complaint. I know I would make a fuss!

If this third paper was a literature paper, for example, and the students had had no time to study the required text, then I could see how they could have a shocker. And bombing in 1/3 of the whole exam might mean that you cannot pass as a whole.

I suppose that it is the school’s responsibility to make sure that their pupils know what will be required of them in the exam, so there would be a breach of contract in this instance.

And I also get the feeling that there is more to this that appears - I bet there had been complaints about the teacher over the year or something similar, which is why the school seem to have held up their hands and admitted they stuffed up.

Will be interesting to see how it pans out when/if it comes to court…

– Quirm

40

My bullshit alarm is going off, but maybe it’s a false alarm. I need some more info to determine that.

Specifically, I need to know how many others in her class failed, and how many passed. Of those that passed, how many were ‘former star pupils’ in this subject.

You see what I’m getting at. Here’s my impression. Some of ‘less gifted’ worked hard and recieved passing grades. This student, and some of her freinds, goofed off and thought they’d be able to skate by.

Of course, I could be wrong.