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Engagement and attendance

At York Law School, it is expected that you will take an active part in your learning. This is what we call engagement. Engagement is about more than attendance; it is about participating as fully as possible in your formal learning activities and engaging in effective study outside those activities. As is suggested at the very beginning of this handbook, the more you put in to your programme of study, the more you will get out of it. 

York Law School engagement and attendance policy

University Regulations state that you should be present at any time at which teaching or other academic engagements have been arranged for your programme (including Saturdays). Based on our own experiences YLS has developed a detailed engagement and attendance policy. We expect you to attend all timetabled learning activities, and your failure to do so may trigger a formal response from us. This policy is intended to give some clarity on attendance requirements and on the consequences of non-attendance. In addition to the tracking under the policy, we also contact students who have missed a number of session in a row. We do this whether you have sent explanations for absence or not and we do so just to check in with you and ensure that you are okay. For the full text of the YLS

The policy, in outline, is as follows:

1. We monitor attendance of compulsory learning activities, which are your small group sessions: PBL and Skills workshops, Roundtables, seminars, etc (including online activities). Engagement in other learning activities is expected and strongly advised.

2. If you can’t attend such a session, you should report your absence as soon as you can to the law-attendance@york.ac.uk address explaining the reasons for absence.

3. If you miss two consecutive compulsory learning activities without explanation, you will be asked to send a written explanation to the YLS Departmental Administrator and your PA within one week.

4. If your PA find your explanation satisfactory, the matter will be closed but if you do not respond within one week or the explanation is not satisfactory, you will be advised

to organise a meeting with your PA to discuss any support you may need.

5. If unexplained absences persist or you don’t engage with your PA, the Programme Leader will contact you. The lack of a satisfactory explanation at this point may be referred to the Board of Studies and might result in programme termination.