Hi everybody,
I am desperately looking for someone with experience in PhD examination, corrections, and appeal.
My story is as follows in short:
1. I passed my PhD viva with major corrections. was given a year to do them
2. Despite many personal circumestances, I managed to do them within time
3. After long time (over 3 months), the examiner decided to fail me as the work was not up to PhD level; however, in his explanation, he claimed that some parts of the work are not as they supposed to be (in specific) an online system I presented as a testing bed for some models I proposed)
4. The problem is, the same system was part of the work I presented before the viva and it was passed without any comments on it or any corrections to be made on it. meaning, is his rationale for failing me, he added new corrections that were never asked to done.
5. I applied for an appeal and it was accepted by the university. he was asked to resolve it informally by the appeal office but he refused.
6. I got my appeal hearing this Thursday and I am freaked out.

any advice is appreciated but my main question is: are internal examiners allowed to add more corrections after the official viva report?

You should have recieved a list of the corrections that had to be made to your thesis after your viva. If all of these have been carried out to both their instructions and your supervisors were happy with it you should have passed no problem.

If this external has added something to the correction list you should have it documented by email etc. If you have nothing from him about this section then you should be able to win your appeal.

You need to show at your appeal that you have done everything that was asked of you post viva and that what he failed you on was never brought to your attention in writing or during the viva.

Good luck.

If your major corrections were officially a revise and resubmit (i.e. you had to actually resubmit the thesis formally) then they may be able to ask you for minor corrections on the resubmitted version. If that's the case, then your best option is to just make the corrections they want.

However, if it wasn't a resubmission, then no there aren't usually any further revisions permitted; it should simply be a case of the examiners stating whether or not the required corrections have been done to their satisfaction, and you pass or fail depending on that. But I don't think they can fail you now for not making corrections that were never asked for -- that would be ridiculous. If that's the case then you should have a strong case for appeal.

I suggest carefully (re)reading your university regulations, and take a copy to the appeal hearing to refer to. Maybe a copy of your viva report as well. Stay calm and stick to the facts. Good luck!