Record number of complaints to ombudsman for England and Wales

The higher education ombudsman for England and Wales received a record number of complaints as Covid-19 disrupted university courses, new data show.

In its latest operating report, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education says that it received 2,604 complaints in 2020, up 10 per cent on 2019, and coming after a 21 per cent rise on the previous year. Around 300 of the latest year’s complaints related to coronavirus-related disruption.

The full impact of the pandemic on complaints to the OIA is potentially yet to be seen, since students cannot take their case to the ombudsman until they have exhausted their university’s internal grievance process.

The OIA report says that there are “challenges in managing such a significant and sustained increase” in the number of complaints – which is up nearly 60 per cent since 2017 – but that it had “take[n] steps to manage our caseload effectively”. The ombudsman closed 2,597 complaints in 2020, up 19 per cent year-on-year, and took an average of 121 days to close a case, down from 127.

The OIA, which has the power to order universities to pay compensation or make amends to students, has indicated that universities will face penalties relating to their move to online learning only if they have not made proper efforts to ensure teaching and learning quality.

An OIA spokeswoman said it was hard to say why more students were bringing their complaints to the watchdog.

“There has been a substantial and sustained rise over recent years – the percentage increase in complaints to us in 2020 was actually smaller than in the previous two years – and we think factors such as students’ increasing awareness of their rights and of routes to raise their concerns are part of the reason for that, as well as disruption arising from specific events,” the spokeswoman said.

“There is always a time lag in complaints reaching us because students need to raise their concerns through their higher education provider’s internal complaints procedures first, so most of the coronavirus-related complaints we received in 2020 related to the 2019-20 academic year.”

The Office for Students, the English regulator, has advised universities to consider offering students fee refunds if the “quality and quantity” of teaching have not lived up to what institutions promised at the beginning of the academic year. Other options could include repeating parts of courses of putting on extra lectures.

The Westminster government has directed students who are not satisfied to take their case to the OIA, which has consulted on allowing students to make complaints as a group if their experiences are similar enough.

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com