We have today published our Operating Report 2024, new strategy and Operating Plan 2025.

We received 3,613 complaints in 2024, a 15% increase on 2023 and once again our highest ever number. Despite the challenges of rising cases, we increased the number of complaints we closed to 3,645, 9% more than in 2023. We exceeded all our timeliness key performance indicators (KPIs), including our key turnaround KPI of closing 75% of cases within six months of receipt (closing 94% of cases within six months of receipt).
We continued to share learning and encourage good practice. We ran a range of outreach activities, sharing learning from complaints and listening to the experiences of students, their representative bodies and higher education providers. We published the revised section of the Delivering learning opportunities with others section of the Good Practice Framework in February, together with a number of casework notes and case summaries of complaints throughout the year.
We continued to work with governments and key organisations in the sector and beyond, drawing on our experience of student complaints as an independent ombuds organisation to promote fairness for students across a range of issues. We also continued to work towards our longstanding aim of extending access to our Scheme to all who could benefit from it, including towards the expansion of our remit in Wales under the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022.
Our Operating Report 2024 records progress against our Operating Plan for 2024. As usual we will more fully explore trends and themes from the year in our Annual Report 2024, which we will publish in the Spring.
In 2024 we developed and agreed a new 2025 strategy which is based around two objectives and four key priorities through which we fulfil our purpose to improve students’ experience by resolving complaints fairly and independently and using the learning we gain to influence change.
Our Operating Plan 2025 sets out how we will advance each of these priorities, in the context of the challenging circumstances facing students and the higher education sector.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
For further information please contact Lisa Ivey, Communications & Service Improvement Officer, mediarelations@oiahe.org.uk, 0118 959 9813.
- The Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) is the independent student complaints ombuds for higher education in England and Wales. It is the designated operator of the student complaints’ scheme under the Higher Education Act 2004.
- Our Scheme is free to students and has been designed to be accessible to all students, without the need for legal representation.
- We have a wide remit to review student complaints about higher education providers in England and Wales, as set out in the Rules of our Scheme.
- Students normally need to complete their higher education providers’ internal complaints or appeals procedures before they can come to us.
- You can find further information about the Scheme and our work at https://www.oiahe.org.uk/.
- We will provide more information about our work last year in our Annual Report for 2024, which we will publish around the end of April.