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Accommodation woes and online classes among OIA complaints

Image: SEO [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr

Watchdog releases swathe of complaints from students relating to Covid-19

Complaints about a lack of face-to-face teaching and rows over accommodation contracts because of Covid-19 are among those that have been partly upheld by the Office for the Independent Adjudicator.

A series of case studies published by the OIA on 29 July give more evidence for how universities have been grappling with requests for tuition fee refunds and complaints about exams and accommodation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is the third set of case studies the OIA has released containing complaints relating to coronavirus.

In one case study, a student on a one-year legal training course asked their institution—not named in the report—for a tuition fee refund after face-to-face classes were cancelled in March 2020. The student argued that the provider breached the terms and conditions of the course by not offering in-person classes, but the institution refused to return the money. The student then complained to the OIA.

The watchdog said that although the institution had made sure it could “deliver something broadly equivalent to its usual arrangements” for three of the modules that went online, a fourth module included role play and communication skills that the institution did not recreate well enough online.

“We do not think the replacement of this teaching with recorded materials was enough to replicate the practical skills students expected to learn. For these reasons, we do not think the university’s decision to reject this complaint was reasonable,” the OIA said.

It ruled that the complaint was partly justified, and it told the institution to repay the student £1,000 for the “disappointment they experienced because they were not able to practise the skills they expected to gain from the module”.

‘Misleading and unfair’

In another case study, a student complained to the OIA after their institution refused to give them a refund for their accommodation, which they could not use during the first lockdown from March 2020. The house belonged to a private landlord and was rented by the university. Although the provider had offered to release students who lived in its own halls from their accommodation contracts, it did not make the same offer to students who lived in the rented accommodation.

The OIA found that while the institution had “acted quickly in response to an unpredictable situation”, it “was not fair to treat students in accommodation that it rented differently from students in accommodation that it owned”.

This is because students were told they would be “better off than those who rented from private landlords”, but this “was not necessarily the case”.

“We think that the provider’s application of a different status to students, depending on whether they were renting accommodation that the provider owned or not, is or might be material information, and not making students aware of that difference could be considered misleading and unfair,” the OIA wrote. “The provider’s decision to reject the student’s complaint was not reasonable.”

‘Challenging and complex’

Other complaints were found to be not justified, while other cases were settled between the student and the institution. In one example, a student had complained after their institution fined them £100 for hosting a party in their university accommodation while indoor gatherings were banned under Covid-19 rules.

The student had argued that party goers from other residences had broken in without their knowledge because of a faulty door lock. But the OIA said the fine was “reasonable” in the circumstances, and pointed out that the university had already reduced it “to take account of the fact that the student had not invited the other students”.

Felicity Mitchell, independent adjudicator at the OIA, said the case studies show “some of the challenging and complex situations that providers and students have been dealing with as a result of the pandemic”.

“They illustrate our approach to deciding what is fair and reasonable in these kinds of situations. We hope they will be helpful to providers and students.”