Case Summaries

They also said they felt they had been bullied and discriminated against by staff at the placement school because they’d asked for reasonable adjustments.

The provider partly upheld the student’s complaint. It agreed that there had been delays in putting adjustments in place, but decided some of those delays were because the student had initially decided not to share relevant information with the placement school. The student was offered an opportunity to re-take the placement at a different school and the provider said it would waive the placement fee. The provider also acknowledged that the way the student’s placement mentor had responded to the student’s concerns about their support needs was not appropriate and was likely to have contributed to a breakdown in the relationship between the student and their mentor. The provider asked the student’s department to contact the placement school to address these issues further. There were delays in the provider’s handling of the complaint, which had caused the student distress and inconvenience and delayed the opportunity to re-take the placement. It therefore offered the student £1,000 as a remedy for the way it handled the student’s complaint. 

The student complained to us because they were unhappy with the provider’s decision to only partly uphold their complaint, and with the remedies it had offered. The student told us that they didn’t feel they could re-take their placement. During our review we also noted that while the provider had asked the department to contact the placement school to address the issues it had identified, it hadn’t offered the student a remedy for those issues. We contacted the provider to see whether it would be willing to make a revised offer in settlement of the student’s complaint. The provider agreed and decided to offer the student a further £1,500. The student accepted the provider’s offer and the complaint to us was Settled.