Central Exam Adjustments

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Central Exam Adjustments can be made if you have a documented medical, physical or mental health condition and/or a specific learning difficulty.

School regulations allow for Central Exam Adjustments (CEAs) to be made if you have a documented medical, physical or mental health condition and/or a Specific Learning Difficulty such as dyslexia or dyspraxia.

The purpose of CEAs is to provide an environment that gives all students an equal opportunity in exams. These adjustments are confidential and will not be listed on your transcript or degree certificate.

If you need details of where your exam will be taking place visit CEA and Late Entry Daily Arrangements.

CEAs for long term conditions exist for the duration of your programme at the LSE.

In order to apply for Long Term CEAs you will need to complete a CEA application, in person, with an advisor from the Disability and Mental Health Service. This is often done at the same time that your Teaching and Learning Adjustments (TLAs) are put in place.

The Disability and Mental Health Service will then approve standard applications and have non-standard applications referred, along with the appropriate medical evidence, to the CEA Panel.

The recommendations on your CEA application will be considered by the CEA Panel. You will receive an outcome email from the CEA Panel once your application and evidence has been considered.

Once approved, agreed CEAs will remain in place throughout the entirety of your programme at the LSE.

If you believe that you are entitled to CEAs and have not yet spoken to the Disability and Mental Health Service, please do so as soon as possible so that your application can be completed prior to the deadline.

Some useful points to remember:

not all CEA recommendations are agreed by the Panel.
CEAs for long term conditions are for the duration of your programme and will only need reviewing should your condition change. If you start a new programme, i.e. finish your undergraduate programme and start a postgraduate programme, you will need to apply again.
should your condition alter and you find you need more or fewer CEAs, you will need to meet with your Disability and Mental Health Service advisor to discuss these.
CEAs and Teaching and Learning Adjustments (TLAs) are not the same. CEAs only apply to centrally organised, in-person, formally invigilated exams and some limited CEAs also apply to short timed online assessments where appropriate.

In order for long term CEAs to be put in place, your application must be completed by the following dates:

For January 2025 exam period: Friday 15 November 2024
For Spring 2025 exam period: Friday 4 April 2025
For the In-Year Resit and Deferral 2025 exam period: Monday 21 July 2025

You should ensure that you make your appointment with the Disability and Mental Health Service in good time as they will assist you with your application.

If you miss the relevant deadline, due to circumstances outside your control, you may be able to apply for short-term adjustments for the upcoming exam period. If successful you will be given adjustments for that exam period only whilst you make your application for long term adjustments with the Disability and Mental Health Service.

You can apply for Short Term CEAs if you experience a short term or unexpected medical condition just before or during the exam period which you feel will affect your exams, or if you have other exceptional circumstances that will affect your exams and would benefit from Short Term CEAs. Short Term CEAs can only be put in place if your medical or other exceptional circumstances will affect your exams; they cannot be put in place to compensate for your exam preparation being affected by your circumstances.

You must apply as early as possible and as soon as you become aware of your short-term medical condition. Adjustments can only be put in place for exams seven calendar days or later after your application is received. You can use the table of deadlines to establish the latest point by which you can apply.

To start your application use the button below to open the online form. Your application will need to be supported by appropriate evidence.

The deadline for each exam date can be found here

Apply for Short Term CEAs

For both Long Term and Short Term CEAs, if we do not receive your application in good time, we may not be able to make the required adjustments and you may be required to defer your assessments.

To maintain impartiality students must not contact members of the Panel directly unless responding to a Panel member’s enquiry. The Panel will email CEA outcomes to students’ LSE email accounts. If you have queries about the CEA process please contact the Student Exams Team in the first instance by submitting an enquiry.

If you have CEAs entitling you to extra writing time and/or rest breaks, these will be applied to the following types of online assessment by the department which runs the course:

Short time-limited assessments with a common start/finish time for all students (e.g. a timed 3 hour assessment).
Short time-limited assessments to be taken at any time within a 24-hour window (e.g. 3 hours within 24 hours).

If you have extra writing time and rest breaks, both will be added to the standard assessment time. This is because it is not feasible to ‘pause the clock’ as administered in traditional on-site exams. Rest break time will be added to the total time you have available to complete the assessment, and you will be expected to manage your own breaks within that period.

Extra writing time and rest breaks are only ever calculated against writing time and not reading time, however, for online assessments where technical/upload time has been added, these adjustments will also be calculated against that time.

For online assessments of 24 hours duration or longer, the assessment window is specifically designed to be longer than the approximate effort required to complete the assessment task. For example, within a full 24-hour assessment window, you may be required to apply approximately 3 or 4 hours of effort to the task. Therefore, the assessment window should give you the opportunity to complete all the tasks at a time that is appropriate to your circumstances, including taking breaks. Extra writing time and rest breaks CEAs will not be applied to this type of assessment. Any student, either with or without CEAs, can apply for an extension to an assessment deadline longer than 24 hours if they are struggling to meet a deadline due to circumstances outside their control.

If you have a Letter of Notification (LoN) as part of your existing CEAs or My Adjustments, you should attach this to all of your online submissions irrespective of their duration. This will notify the examiner/s of any relevant information that should be considered. If you do not have a digital copy of your LoN, please contact the Disability and Mental Health Service.

If you currently have CEAs, your adjustments such as extra writing time or rest breaks still apply.

If your CEAs include use of a PC, your exam will take place in a PC room and you will have the option to use Digiexam on your own device or Microsoft Word on an LSE PC (which is not connected to the network). Like all students, you also have the option to handwrite your exam.

If your CEAs include a Letter of Notification (LoN), the department will be informed of this so they can take it into account when marking your e-Exams.

Peripheral items (such as mouse or keyboard) are not permitted in e-Exams.

If you need additional equipment (such as a specific keyboard or mouse) due to having a documented medical, physical or mental health condition and/or a Specific Learning Difficulty, you must ensure these are formally included as part of your adjustments, please contact the Disability and Mental Health Service.

If you currently have CEAs that you believe may need to be updated or you need to apply for CEAs, please contact the Disability and Mental Health Service for guidance and support.

The CEA process is run jointly by the Student Exams and SSC Support Team and Disability and Mental Health Service.

All non-standard recommendations and applications for CEAs are considered by the CEA Panel. The aim of the Panel is to ensure that all CEAs are fair both to the student involved and also all other students. The Panel will check to make sure that all recommendations/applications are properly evidenced and appropriate to the condition.

If, having received the outcome email from the CEA Panel, you believe your CEAs are not appropriate then you have the right to appeal.

These are the grounds for the appeal process:

The CEAs awarded do not make sufficient adjustments according to the documentation describing your condition.
There was a procedural defect in the Panel’s decision making process.

You should not submit an appeal If:

You have been diagnosed with a new condition.
You have obtained further evidence which justifies further or different adjustments to those originally approved by the CEA Panel.

In these cases you should submit a new CEA application to be considered by the CEA Panel.

To appeal you must complete the Appeal Against a CEA Panel Decision form. If you are basing your appeal on evidence then you must attach the evidence to the form. No new evidence should be submitted at appeal that was not submitted with the original application. If you have new evidence for consideration, you should not submit an appeal form but should instead submit a new CEA application and submit the new evidence for the CEA Panel to consider.

If you wish to appeal, you must do so within ten working days of receiving your outcome email from the CEA Panel which contains your agreed CEAs.

The Appeal Panel will consider all of the information presented to it and decide whether the original decision was appropriate or if the CEAs should be changed. Please bear in mind that the Appeal Panel may decide to offer fewer adjustments than were offered initially.

When the Panel has made its decision it will contact you by email and explain the decision within seven working days of you submitting an appeal.

To maintain impartiality students must not contact members of the Appeal Panel directly unless responding to a Panel member’s enquiry.

The Appeal Panel aims to consider your application as quickly as possible, and within seven working days of you submitting an appeal. You should be aware that it can take some time to put CEAs in place, so even if a decision is made before an exam you must remember that it may not be operationally possible to put the CEAs in place in time for your exam if the decision is close. Please therefore aim to submit your form as soon as possible.

If you have queries about the CEA appeal process please contact the Student Exams Team in the first instance by submitting an enquiry.

If CEAs have been agreed you will take your exam in a designated venue rather than a main exam room. We do this because we cannot put adjustments in place in the main exam rooms.

The location of your exam will be shown on the Central Exam Adjustment and Late Entrants list. This is published online, five calendar days before the exam and posted as ‘pink lists’ in the Student Services Centre and in the entrance of Clement House on the morning of your exam. Please ignore any rooms showing on your personal timetable in LSE for You.

Your CEAs will only be available in the exam room indicated on the above lists; you will not be able to take advantage of your individual adjustments in any other room.

CEAs are provided for many students and for a variety of reasons. As a result there will usually be several students in the same CEA room. Some of these students will have permission to take rest breaks and/or leave the room at different times. As such you are expected to take rest breaks and leave rooms quietly so as to minimise any disruption to other candidates.

The factsheets below provide some more detail on how some common adjustments work. If you have been granted adjustments then we recommend that you read the factsheet prior to your exams.

If you require a factsheet in an alternative format then please contact either the Disabilty and Mental Health Service or the Student Exams and SSC Support Team who will be happy to assist.

The list above is by no means exhaustive and the Panel may offer you different adjustments. If you have any queries about the adjustments that you have been offered please submit an enquiry.

CEAs are intended to remove inequality at the point you take the exam, so Boards of Examiners are not made aware of approved CEAs for any individual candidate.

If you feel that your CEAs were insufficient, e.g. as the result of an acute episode of a chronic condition, you should inform the Board by submitting proof of Exceptional Circumstances.