Recently the University of South Africa (Unisa) offered applications to write aegrotat exams – replacement exams written at a later date – because of loadshedding and other problems affecting the process. Now the school has updated students who may have received an error.

“Some students who could not recently write their examinations in November 2021 and who submitted applications for an aegrotat / deferred examination to write in January 2022, have received error messages when attempting to submit an application to aegrotats[at]unisa[dot]ac[dot]za. Kindly note that the matter was resolved and students may please re-submit their applications. The inconvenience is sincerely regretted,” reads an announcement from the Directorate Student Assessment Administration.

There were rules and exceptions in place for these applications so we’re sure a few students may have found themselves disheartened by seeing an error message thinking that they did something wrong.

While Unisa is a distance university where students usually study through the internet, exams did require an in-person visit to an exam centre to physically sit and write them. That changed in 2020 because of the pandemic and online assessments became a permanent fixture.

The university also implemented certain structures to prevent cheating during these online exams and make it a fair playing field, but these don’t count for anything if Eskom decides that it’s time for another round of loadshedding.

Even when the electricity is flowing almost anything could interrupt an internet connection and lead to a student being removed from the online session of their exam, which would then make an application for an aegrotat paper necessary.

In the past aegrotat exams existed purely for emergencies preventing students from being at an exam in-person, health issues, grieving or other similar distressing turns. With the new online exams this has had to be expanded.

It’s why Unisa also noted a surge in applications which lead to delays responding to applications.

Finally it’s worth mentioning that, in the past, we’ve seen students reporting that certain Unisa email addresses will bounce emails back when the mailbox is full. Should students encounter this problem when contacting the aegrotat email below, they should consult the university contact details for the next best way to get in touch.