Students > Student administration > Forms, letters and documents > Special consideration > Reasons and documentation

Reasons and documentation

Special Consideration is one of several possible adjustments to assessments available at La Trobe University. It is specifically intended to support students who experience serious short-term, unforeseen, or exceptional life events or circumstances that substantially affect their ability to complete an assessment task to the best of their potential.

Streamlined Special Consideration process for students impacted by situation in Bondi

If you are applying for Special Consideration due to the situation that occurred in Bondi on Saturday 13 April 2024 you will only need to provide a personal statement that outlines your circumstances in your application. If we require additional information from you, a member of our team will contact you.

Submit an application

Documentation

Official and verifiable supporting documentation must be provided.

Documentation must indicate the date of the exceptional or unforeseen circumstances and the duration/dates of impact.

Documents in languages other than English must be translated by a NAATI-accredited translator or a La Trobe University staff member.

Examples of acceptable grounds for Special Consideration and documentation include:

Category	Circumstance	Required supporting documentation
Students registered with AccessAbility and Inclusion	if you have a Learning Access Plan (LAP) you may apply for Special Consideration where you experience an exacerbation of your condition or are affected by a different serious and acute circumstance	your current Learning Access Plan (LAP) together with a Personal Statement that explains how your current circumstances have impacted the completion of an assessment task
Medical, including serious illness or injury	emergency surgery any serious illness or conditions requiring medical treatment and/or recovery from such treatment broken limb impacting on the ability to undertake assessment task primary carer responsibilities for a dependent family member who is seriously ill or injured	La Trobe Medical Impact Statement. A medical certificate will not suffice and your application will be delayed if additional documentation needs to be provided hospital admission/discharge summary carer’s certificate
Emotional distress	family or relationship breakdown personal or family hardship as a result of a natural disaster sudden loss of income or employment abuse (e.g. incident of domestic violence, flight from an abusive situation) emergency travel as a result of major political upheaval in your home country traumatic experience (e.g. witnessing or being involved in a serious accident, witnessing or being a victim of a serious crime	community letter letter from employer or notice of unexpected cessation of employment police or incident report La Trobe Medical Impact Statement completed by your treating psychologist or counsellor. A certificate will not suffice, and your application will be delayed if additional documentation needs to be provided
Misadventure	transport breakdown causing you to miss or to be significantly late for an examination or other assessment task power or internet outage	police or incident report insurance incident claim written confirmation of the outage and duration that includes your listed street address in student online. Eg. text message received regarding the outage from your power or internet provider
Bereavement	death of a close family member	obituary, death or funeral notice as advertised in newspaper/internet/funeral director’s website documentation such as birth or marriage certificate or a Statutory Declaration where required to confirm family relationship where the matter is Sorry Business, First Nation/Indigenous students are invited to submit a Statutory Declaration outlining circumstances

As always, where there are special circumstances, these will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

If you are having difficulties around placements, contact your placements office in the first instance.

If you are having difficulties with your studies or don’t think that you can submit your assessment task by the due date, speak to your subject coordinator in the first instance. They are here to help you and understand that this is a challenging time for us all.

Unavoidable commitments known in advance are not handled via Special Consideration and are managed instead through an application for an Alternative Exam Arrangement. For example:

armed services duty
artistic commitments
elite athlete commitments
exam or assessment clash at other institution
jury duty or court appearance
emergency services employee or volunteer
religious or cultural obligations

Read about alternative arrangements for the above circumstances.

Privacy statement

La Trobe University respects the privacy of your personal information. We collect personal information in order to assess your eligibility for special consideration. Documentation that you provide as part of a special consideration application is strictly confidential and is subject to the protections of relevant privacy laws. Your confidential information is only made available to authorised staff as part of the special consideration process. You may have the right to access the personal information that we hold about you subject to any exemptions in relevant laws, by contacting ASK La Trobe.