Telling students about the Large Group Complaints process (additional Rule 14)
34Additional Rule 14 says, “We expect higher education providers to help us with the administration of our review of Large Group Complaints. This will include giving students information about the availability of the Large Group Complaint process.”
35Under our usual Rules, providers should issue a Completion of Procedures Letter to a student at the end the internal procedures, giving the student information about their right to complain to us. In some circumstances, where the provider has discussed the existence of a Large Group Complaint with us before the Completion of Procedures Letter is issued, we may ask the provider to include some specific information in the letter, for example, a link to a special Complaint Form for the Large Group Complaint. In other instances, the usual text will be sufficient. We will then explain the Large Group Complaints process to the students who complain to us.
36Where some students have not completed the provider’s internal procedures but could be included within a Large Group Complaint to us, we will discuss with the provider, student representative body and the students who have complained to us, how those students can be informed about their options. Information about us should already be available in general terms to all students through a provider’s published complaints procedures.
37When something has gone wrong, it’s important that students know what their options are so that they can decide whether or not to make a complaint. We may ask the provider or student representative body to send information to students who have been affected by the issue. It’s likely that the provider would be able to identify students within particular groups, for example, residents of a particular accommodation block or students within a specific cohort on a particular programme. We won’t put information about the (potential) existence of a Large Group Complaint at a provider into the public domain, for example, on social media.