Occasionally you may encounter circumstances that disrupt your ability to study and need to apply for a pause to your unit - this is called a deferral.
- Deferral - A break in study (pause) to a unit. This will require supporting evidence for deferrals above 3 months.
- Maternity Leave - If you are pregnant, you can apply for 12 month Maternity leave from the expected date on your MATB1 form.
- Postponement of Assessment - if you are an undergraduate student who is unable to submit for the assessment event you are invited to following completion of your unit, you will be applying for a postponement of assessment to the next event. This will require supporting evidence.
For a short deferral (3 months) you will not need to provide supporting evidence. You can apply for a short deferral once per unit. The maximum deferral and extension time is up to 12 months per unit in total, whether this is from one application or more.
We recommend reading the policy before making an application.
To make an application please use the Deferral request form, and submit this with any required supporting evidence via the helpdesk, or via learnersupport@oca.ac.uk.
The panel have up to 20 working days to review applications once the clerk has checked and confirmed that your application is complete, so please ensure you apply in good time, with enough course time remaining for you to defer (pause).
If you do not have enough course time remaining to defer, you may also want to look at the extensions information:- How do I apply for extra time on my unit (extension)