Complaints to England and Wales sector ombudsman hit new high

There has been another steep rise in the number of student complaints taken to England and Wales’ higher education ombudsman, with more than 3,000 raised in a year for the first time.

In its operating report, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) said it received 3,137 complaints in 2023, a 10 per cent rise on the 2,850 seen in 2022 and the seventh year in a row this figure has gone up. 

A record number of complaints has now been recorded in each of the last four years, driven in part by Covid-era disruption to university teaching.

While the pandemic might still have had a role in the rise of 2023, given that the OIA only receives a complaint once a university’s own grievance process has been exhausted and students have 12 months to start proceedings, the continued increase potentially indicates that high levels of complaints are here to stay.

The academic year 2022-23 was severely disrupted by industrial action, including a prolonged marking boycott that delayed graduations at some institutions, but an OIA spokesperson said there had not yet been a large number of complaints related to this disruption.

The OIA would release more details about the cost and substance of the complaints later in the year, they added, and the reasons why they were rising was a “complex picture”.

“There have been a number of events in recent years that have given rise to complaints and it’s a challenging climate for students and the higher education sector, but it’s also possible that students are finding it easier to raise their concerns and/or have greater awareness of their rights. The overall number of students has also risen over recent years,” the spokesperson said.

Despite the high number of complaints, the OIA’s report said the organisation had increased the number of cases it closed in 2023 to 3,352, 19 per cent more than in 2022.

Progress was also made in the speed of settling the complaints, with the OIA meeting its target for closing 75 per cent of cases within six months. Last year, only 69 per cent of cases were settled in this timeframe. It took an average of 125 days to close a complaint in 2023, compared with 135 days in 2022.

The OIA spokesperson said there had been a continued focus on efficiency and “improvement of our processes as well as increasing capacity to manage the higher number of complaints coming to us, and that has contributed to enabling us to close more cases”.

The year was the first overseen by two new senior leaders, with Felicity Mitchell replaced by Helen Megarry as independent adjudicator in May and Sim Scavazza appointed chair of the board of trustees in October.

Last year, the size of the OIA’s caseload was raised in court by lawyers representing the organisation Student Group Claim (SGC), which is suing UCL over teaching received during strikes and the pandemic.

The institution had attempted to get the claim for “breach of contract” put on hold, arguing that it should have been dealt with by its own procedures and then the ombudsman, rather than in the courts.

But Judge Barbara Fontaine ruled that some of the SGC lawyers’ concerns about the OIA being overwhelmed by having to deal with thousands more complaints were valid and declined to force the parties down this path. She gave both sides eight months to find a resolution, a deadline that expires this March.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com