Case Summaries

The provider partly upheld the student’s appeal. Half the in-person tutorials had been cancelled due to industrial action and the student had not received some coursework marks and feedback. It agreed these issues were likely to have impacted the student’s performance. It offered the student a further attempt at the module with intensive tuition and support and said the mark for this attempt would not be capped. It also refunded the fee the student had paid for their resit attempt. The provider didn’t uphold the part of the appeal related to a lack of personal tutor support. 

The student complained to us. They were unhappy with the remedy the provider had offered because they no longer wanted to return to the course. We upheld their complaint (we decided it was Justified).

The provider had accepted that the student didn’t receive the expected level of tuition and feedback. The remedy it offered could have been appropriate if the appeal had been resolved quickly. But significant delays in its appeals procedure meant the practical academic remedy it had offered was no longer a reasonable outcome for the student. The student had made it clear that because of the delays and the impact the extended period of uncertainty was having on their mental health, they had made alternative arrangements to pursue their chosen career via an apprenticeship route. We thought the provider should have considered alternative remedies when the student said they no longer wanted to return to the course.  

We also thought it was unreasonable for the provider to have dismissed the parts of the appeal related to the lack of personal tutor support. The provider had accepted that the student hadn’t received the expected level of support and we thought that it should have properly acknowledged this and apologised to the student.

Because the student hadn’t been given a fair opportunity to pass their first year and a practical remedy was no longer possible we recommended that the provider should refund the student’s first-year tuition fees in full. We also recommended £500 in compensation for the distress and uncertainty caused by the provider’s delays, a refund of all the re-sit fees paid by the student, and that the provider should apologise.