ANNUAL REPORT 2023 - Sharing learning

Sharing learning to help improve policy and practice is a key part of our role. We do this through our published good practice guidance, and through our extensive outreach engagement with providers, student representative bodies and students. This engagement is also a valued opportunity for us to learn, deepening our understanding of the sector and the issues affecting students and providers.

Good Practice Framework

Our Good Practice Framework sets out principles and operational guidance to support higher education providers in England and Wales. It draws on our broad experience in handling complaints, and informs the way we consider complaints.

The Framework currently has six sections: Handling complaints and academic appeals, Delivering learning opportunities with others, Supporting disabled students, Requests for additional consideration, Disciplinary procedures, and Fitness to practise.

We regularly review and update the Framework to make sure that it continues to be relevant and current. In 2023 we developed and consulted on a revised version of the Delivering learning opportunities with others section of the Framework. In January and February, we held a series of informal webinar discussions to help inform the initial stages of our review, with attendees from both providers that are delivering learning leading to an award from another provider, and providers that have awards which are delivered elsewhere. We then consulted on the draft revised section. We are grateful to everyone from providers, student representative bodies and sector organisations whose feedback informed the final version, and to our Good Practice Framework Steering Group for their valuable input.

The section sets out guidance on handling complaints, academic appeals and other internal processes in the context of delivering learning opportunities with others. The main developments in the revised section are:

• We developed the guidance on how overarching good practice principles apply in partnership contexts
• We clarified the principles that apply to student-focused internal processes such as fitness to practise and disciplinary procedures as well as complaints and academic appeals procedures
• We expanded the guidance on considering complaints, appeals and other internal processes through the life cycle of a partnership, particularly around key points in partnership relationships and when those might come to an end
• We updated the case studies to reflect learning from our casework.

We published the final updated version in February 2024.

Outreach activities

Our outreach activities through the year included workshops, webinars, visits to providers, other discussions with individual providers and student representative bodies, discussion groups, and contributing to external events.

Workshops and webinars

We ran a range of workshops and webinars, including events tailored for providers and for student representative bodies, both to introduce people to us and our work and to look at particular topics such as early resolution and settlement, academic misconduct, disciplinary matters, fitness to practise, requests for additional consideration, and accommodation. Demand was high, with around 900 people joining these events. Participants valued the opportunity to learn more about good practice and our approach, and found the sessions a useful prompt to look again at procedures and practice in their own organisation, as well as to share experiences with others often facing many of the same or similar challenges.

Visits

In 2023 we continued to visit providers and student representative bodies across England and Wales. Visits are an opportunity for providers and student representative bodies to hear more about our work and to talk with us about current patterns and trends in complaints and appeals. We don’t carry out audits or inspections of procedures or processes during visits. The visits enable us to discuss and understand challenges faced by providers separately from the review of individual complaints, and explore how good practice can be applied in a provider’s particular context.

Visits are also an opportunity for us to listen to and learn from student representative bodies and providers: the concerns and challenges they have and what is working well, the unique features of individual providers and the makeup of their student body, and their experience of our service. A common theme in these discussions was ongoing significant difficulties for students struggling with the cost of living and finding it difficult to get accommodation that is affordable, local to their place of study and of an adequate standard.

In our visits we often discuss the importance of strong links and regular information sharing between services that offer advice and support to students and staff working in providers addressing student complaints and appeals. Those who advise and represent students can benefit from seeing the outcomes of complaints made to the OIA, where these can be successfully anonymised, to better tailor their advice to students. Providers may be able to reduce complaints by taking action to address students’ misunderstandings or concerns flagged by advice services.

We are also grateful to the providers and student representative bodies in England and Wales who helped to welcome Helen Megarry to the sector since she took up the role of Independent Adjudicator and generously shared insights into their own context and the sector more widely.

Discussion groups

During the year we ran discussion groups with students, student advisers and with our Points of Contacts in providers.

The student discussion groups enabled us to hear directly from students who had not complained to us, to help us understand more about students’ experiences, and were also an opportunity to raise awareness of our work and how we can help. They included sessions focused on the experiences of disabled students, students from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and students of different faiths (see also Equality, diversity and inclusion). We are grateful to all the students who have shared their perspectives with us.

The cost of living was a common concern raised in these discussions, and some students described making difficult choices about attending teaching, having to balance factors including the cost of transport and the need to undertake paid employment. We also heard how industrial action in other spheres including transport and primary education meant that some students were prevented from attending scheduled teaching. Some students shared that they were feeling very anxious about the potential impact of industrial action in higher education on their studies. In general students were aware that there were processes to raise concerns or seek support but often felt that these would be time consuming or intrusive.

Participants in the student adviser groups and the provider Points of Contact groups told us they valued the learning and networking opportunity and the chance to share their experiences and learn about practice elsewhere. We have also benefited from the groups, learning from participants’ depth of knowledge and experience.

External events

In addition to events we hosted ourselves, we also spoke at events run by other organisations. Some of these were mainly for those who manage complaints and appeals at providers. Others gave us the opportunity to talk to a wider audience about the service we provide, and about learning from complaints across a range of topics including sexual misconduct, harassment and gender-based violence, mitigating circumstances, reasonable adjustments for disabled students, and consumer rights. We took part in events hosted by a wide range of organisations including the Academic Registrars’ Council (ARC), the Committee of University Chairs (CUC), GuildHE, Independent HE, the Medical Schools Council, the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT), and Universities UK (UUK), as well as contributing to the NUS Membership Services Conference and the NUS Lead & Change programme.