Information for students

Just like in the winter semester, a certificate has been made available for download for students attending in-person examinations or face-to-face courses in summer semester 2021.

You can download the commuter certificate here and print it out.

Please note that the certificate is only valid when presented together with your current enrolment certificate for summer semester 2021.

Face masks covering the nose and mouth must be worn whenever the candidate enters or leaves the examination room and the desk. In addition, a mask-wearing obligation has also been imposed until 18 March 2021 as a result of the current infection situation.

Currently, there is no express obligation to wear an FFP-2 mask – although the University urges you to do so if you can.

If no FFP-2 masks are available on the exam day, simple surgical masks or other DIY masks may also be used. If the mask-wearing requirement is extended beyond 18 March 2021, this will be announced in a coronavirus update sent via Stud.IP and on the University's coronavirus web page.

This situation is not covered by the Corona regulation. In addition, examinations have already taken place for which students were unable to register retrospectively, so that it is necessary, also for reasons of equal treatment, to stick to the registrations or de-registrations that have already taken place.

If, in individual cases, you are unable to wear a face mask during the examination for health reasons, you must apply, without delay, for an exemption at the Examinations Office. The application must be accompanied by a medical certificate from a specialist which lists, in a comprehensible manner, the specific health issues preventing the students from wearing a face mask during an examination. Otherwise, the student will not be allowed to participate in the examination.

Removal of the face mask is required or permitted for the purpose of checking the student's identity (if asked to do so) or to communicate with people with hearing disabilities.

If no face mask can be worn due to special examination requirements (e.g. practical music examinations), the mask requirement is waived for the time of the performance of the corresponding assessment.

Short-term and temporary removal of the mask for the purpose of taking food is permissible, especially during long examinations.

The following applies for summer semester 2021:

• The Corona regulation (German) states that registered exams count. This means that if you are ill or unable to attend, you must submit supporting documents to the Examinations Office.
• Exception: If an examination is announced as an in-person examination and a change of format becomes necessary due to the covid-19 epidemic after the end of the respective registration period, the examination performance of students who do not attend the examination will not be graded as 'failed' (§ 2(5) sentence 2 Corona regulation).

The following applies for winter semester 2020–21:

• Failed examinations taken in winter semester 2020–21 are not counted (free exam attempt). This also applies to a fail mark awarded because you aborted an exam after it started, or withdrew from the exam, without furnishing an important or valid reason. This does not apply to exams and dissertations/theses on which you attained a pass mark or failed assessments where your fail mark (or mark of 'unsatisfactory') was received due to cheating or plagiarism. Important: This regulation does not apply to any state examinations.

The following applies to summer semester 2020:

• In the event of non-attendance (e.g. illness or inability to attend), the examination registration does not count. You do not need to submit a medical certificate. Important: This regulation does not apply to any state examinations and dissertations/theses for which you may be registered.

If you are ill on the day of the examination and, in particular, show symptoms of a respiratory illness, no matter how light these may be, or unspecific symptoms of illness, you are not allowed to enter the university buildings. In this case, the supervisory staff responsible for the examinations will ensure that the ban on entering the premises is observed.

• Even if you are aware that you have come into contact with a confirmed Covid-19 patient within the last 14 days before the day of the examination (category-1 contact person as per RKI definition; German text) but you do not have any symptoms of illness, you are still not allowed to attend the examination.
• If you have stayed in a high-risk area, virus variant area or risk area as per the RKI announcements (https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Risikogebiete_neu.html; German text), or
• have tested positive

you will not be allowed to take the exam.

Exceptions:

• Those with respiratory symptoms brought about by allergies (runny nose, cough or sore throat) are allowed to sit their exams. The prerequisite is the presentation of a specialist medical certificate confirming the allergy and the typical symptoms. You must bring this certificate with you to the exam.
• Those with a medical certificate in German or English confirming that there are no indications of an infection with SARS-CoV-2 and who present this to the University of Passau are also exempt. The medical certificate must be based on a molecular biological test for the presence of an infection with SARS-CoV-2 carried out in a member state of the European Union or in another state which the RKI has included in a list of states with a sufficiently high quality standard, and which was carried out no more than 48 hours before submission to the University of Passau. You must take this certificate with you to the exam.
• Please note that so-called 'antibody tests'/PCR tests are insufficient.

The following applies for summer semester 2021:

• According to the Corona regulation, registered exams count. This also means that you must submit evidence to the Examinations Office in the event of illness, if you are prevented from taking the examination or are abandoning the examination (e.g. for technical reasons).
• Exception: If an examination is announced as an in-person examination and a change of format becomes necessary due to the covid-19 epidemic after the end of the respective registration period, the examination performance of students who do not attend the examination will not be graded as 'failed' (§ 2(5) sentence 2 Corona regulation).

The following applies for winter semester 2020–21:

Failed examinations taken in winter semester 2020–21 are not counted (free exam attempt). This also applies to a fail mark awarded because you aborted an exam after it started, or withdrew from the exam, without furnishing an important or valid reason. This does not apply to exams and dissertations/theses on which you attained a pass mark or failed assessments where your fail mark (or mark of 'unsatisfactory') was received due to cheating or plagiarism. Important: This regulation does not apply to any state examinations.

The following applies to summer semester 2020:

If you missed the exam (e.g. due to illness or inability to attend) or attained a fail mark, the examination registration, respectively the exam attempt, does not count. If you did not show up or failed an exam, HISQIS is set to automatically disregard the exam. Important: This regulation does not apply to any state examinations and dissertations/theses for which you may be registered.

The second covid emergency act is now in effect The covid-19-related changes to the Bavarian higher education act (website in German) will now apply for the 2020–21 winter semester and the 2021 summer semester.

For the purposes of the regular dates and deadlines laid down in the examination regulations for the study programmes, the summer semester 2020, winter semester 2020–21 and summer semester 2021 are not counted as subject semesters (Art. 99(1) BayHSchG). The Ministry of Science has updated the FAQ on its website (website in German). You will find further answers there, e.g. on questions related to BAföG and examinations.

As these are automatic you do not need to apply (or provide supporting documents) for an extension. These deadlines are automatically extended if necessary.
The above automatic extensions do not apply to writing periods for written assignments, seminar papers, project work and dissertations or theses.

What does that mean for you?

• Have you already reached the maximum period of study according to your examination regulations and received an official notice of initial fail ('erstmaliges Nichtbestehen')? You will soon receive an additional notice indicating the new deadlines/dates from the Examinations Office.
• Did you reach the maximum study period at the end of summer semester 2020 or winter semester 2020–21 or will you reach it at the end of summer semester 2021? For these semesters, the maximum-duration-of-studies check has been suspended and will not continue until after the end of winter semester 2021–22. Therefore, these semesters are not counted if you were regularly enrolled. Examinations you have passed will, however, count.
• Are you falling short of the prescribed number of ECTS credits you should have accumulated in these semesters (e.g. in the degree programmes B.Sc. Business Administration and Economics, B.Sc. Information Systems and the FIM degree programmes)? Again, summer semester 2020, winter semester 2020–21 and summer semester 2021 do not count as subject semesters.
• Are you regularly enrolled in a degree programme but a (long) way away from reaching the maximum period of study or another deadline? The summer semester 2020, the winter semester 20/21 and the summer semester 2021 will also not be counted towards your subject semesters when checking against the maximum duration of studies.
• Are you on a sabbatical (leave of absence) and have not yet reached the maximum period of study? Semesters off do not affect your study progress. The deadlines set out in the examination regulations will continue to apply to you.
• Are you studying a teacher education programme? The Bavarian Ministry of Education has announced special regulations for the First State Examination for teacher education programmes (German) on its website.
• Are you studying the undergraduate law programme at the University of Passau? The automatic extension for assessment deadlines or the maximum period of study also apply to the preliminary examination in law and the university-set portion of the First Examination in Law.

When you are on a semester on leave (aka 'semester out' or 'sabbatical' – Urlaubssemester in German), you can only resit examinations that you failed in a previous semester. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there is a special regulation in place concerning exams: If you did not appear for an exam for which you had previously registered or attempted and failed an examination, your registration/exam result was (or will be) tagged 'KNA'. This indicates that the attempt will not be counted towards your degree and its status is as though you had never registered for or sat the exam in the first place.

However, that status also means that you cannot resit the examination you failed or did not appear for in summer semester 2020 while you are on a leave semester, as that would count as a first attempt, which is not permitted during a leave semester.

During the leave semester you may only register for and resit examinations that were not attempted/failed before summer semester 2020.

Are you unable to complete assessments within the required timeframe due to the postponement of examinations (e.g. physical education; second examination dates)?

The Bavarian Ministry of State has published special regulations at https://www.km.bayern.de/ministerium/termine/1-staatspruefung-anmeldung-pruefungen.html for

• Module assessments and 30 ECTS credit requirement
• Practice teaching
• Practical sport examinations for P.E.
• Zulassungsarbeit (dissertation for teacher education programmes)
• Other requirements for admission to the first state exam.
• Change of the autumn 2020 examination periods

announced. The respective units (e.g. examinations office, sports centre, teacher placement office) will draw up the relevant certificates and procedures so that you can take advantage of the special regulations for the admissions procedure.

Special rules have also been announced:

• for exam resits
• for the free attempt and
• on the registration deadline

Registrations for the Vorbereitungsdienst for the teacher education programmes for primary school and Mittelschule are conducted online. For further information, please visit https://www.km.bayern.de/lehrer/lehrerausbildung/grundschule/referendariat.html (German page)

The closing date for registrations for the 2021–23 traineeship is 13 April 2021

Please contact the teacher education coordinators or the teacher placement office, who will be able to help.

The submission deadlines for bachelor's dissertations and master's theses at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Information Systems and the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics have been adjusted and reinstated.

The deadlines for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities are currently still suspended. This means: Until the literature supply is restored to the usual extent, you may continue to add the number of days the library is closed to your original submission date. You can find an example calculation for this further down in our FAQs. However, there is no requirement to wait with the submission. If you have finished your dissertation or thesis, you can hand your work before the library reopens.

For written seminar papers and other written assignments, the decision on deadline extensions is taken individually by the relevant supervisor, as it may be possible to complete assignments on time using available resources even during the library closure (e.g. using online literature). This also applies to the seminar papers for the specialisation areas of the Faculty of Law – please see visit the page of the Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Law for details.

This calculation cannot be made right now because it contains an unknown: the date on which the library will reopen. Since no-one knows when the library will reopen, or at least when the lending service will have been fully restored to normal, there is simply no way to determine the new submission deadline yet. However, we can show you two examples of how to correctly calculate the new submission date once the library does reopen.

Example 1: You registered your dissertation/thesis before 14 March: (closing date of the library):

Simply add the entire closure period = the calendar days between the library closure (14 March 2020) and re-opening (?? Month 2020) to the original deadline. If the library were to reopen on 30 May 2020 – this is a fictitious date simply for the sake of the example – the calculation would look like this:

Original submission deadline: 31 March 2020

+ 77 days of closure (14 March to 30 May 2020)

= New submission deadline: 16 June 2020

Example 2: You registered your dissertation or thesis after 14 March:

Even then the deadline for your dissertation or thesis is suspended for the number of days between registration and reopening.

If the calculated submission date falls on a weekend or a public holiday in Bavaria, you should submit your work on the following working day.

Again: You can only make this calculation once the library is fully open; the reopening date used in the calculation above is entirely fictitious. We will inform you of this in good timein our regular updates. The Examinations Office will also inform you separately of the new submission deadlines.

We recommend that you hold these meetings not in person but using telephones or video chat; the meetings do not then have to be cancelled.

For up-to-date information on changes in the study and examination schedule of the Faculty of Law for summer semester 2020, visit the webpage of the Dean of Studies.

In order to ensure a sound legal basis, the Examinations Office has sent scans to the students who registered for exam script viewing. If at all possible, it would be helpful if you could register to view your exam scripts in winter semester 2020–21 or even summer semester 2021. The exams will then be reserved for you.