Medical student Jaap Pesman has lost his appeal against what he believes was an unjust imposition of internships.
In September, the Council of State sent the Board of Appeal for Examinations (CBE) back to the drawing board, but it has upheld its original assessment.
In July 2021, Pesman received a failing grade, known as ‘not yet on track’ (NYOT), for an internship in the second year of the medical master programme. To remedy this, he had to complete two additional internships and redo the failed one.
According to the medical programme’s examiner and the exam committee, this was standard procedure. Due to the pandemic, students completed fewer internships than usual. However, those who did not perform well were still required to complete the original number of ten internships.
Alternative solution
Pesman disagreed with this decision. He demonstrated that there were indeed cases for which an alternative solution had been reached. He also argued that the examiner was biased and aimed to penalise him excessively.
He fought his case at every appeals body he could find, until the Council of State stated this summer that the justification for imposing two ‘penalty internships’ was insufficient.
The Board of Appeal for Examinations had to reevaluate the case within two months. They were told to focus specifically on the motivation behind the extra internships, not whether the examiner’s assessment was accurate or not.
Main and side issues
This has now been done. The examiner explained that ‘appellant had difficulty distinguishing main and side issues during various internships, even in those that were assessed as on track’.
She had chosen to impose two additional internships ‘to give the student the opportunity to show progress’. ‘My assessment was that, with three internships remaining, there was not enough time for the student to achieve a passing grade twice’, the examiner wrote.
Not careless
The CBE considers this motivation sufficient. ‘The imposed remedial measure of two internships with the additional condition that the appellant had to show improvement does not seem unreasonable or careless to the CBE.’
Pesman announced that he will take the case back to the Council of State. ‘What the examiner says has been extensively proven incorrect’, he responded. ‘All avenues to finally consider the content have been blocked.’
He regards the case as a defamation campaign. ‘I will fight this until it is clear, including appropriate apologies from the University of Groningen.’