What is a Large Group Complaint? (Rule 16A, additional Rule 1)
1The Large Group Complaints process is designed to manage complaints brought by groups of hundreds of students. Smaller groups are managed within our usual review process. We would not normally use the process for complaints involving fewer than 100 students. But the additional Rules do not specify a minimum number of students because that could be quite arbitrary and might be viewed as a target to be reached.
2The complaint made by the students must all be about the same provider. Under this process we will not consider together complaints from students where the complaints are similar but are about different providers. We may consider complaints from students at different delivery providers under the Large Group Complaints process, if they all have the same complaint about an awarding provider.
3The complaint made by the students must be about the same or very similar issues and it is likely that if the complaints are found to be Justified or Partly Justified, the same remedy would apply. An example might be a group of students all studying the same course, in the same year, and at the same provider, who have all been affected by disruption in the same way. We decide whether the complaints are sufficiently similar that they can be reviewed together under the Large Group Complaints process.
4Sometimes an event or situation that affects a large number of students may have a different impact on some or all of those students. This means that in some cases, we may identify sub-groups within a Large Group, and we may identify different outcomes to the complaint. In some cases, we will consider students’ complaints individually under our usual Rules even if the cause of the complaint is the same event as other students’ complaints.