AM shocked that Ombudsman Upholds 27% of Student Complaints

12.40.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 20th Aug 2007

Welsh Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Education, Kirsty Williams AM, has voiced her concern at the revelation from recently released figures that over a quarter of Student's 381 complaints against universities have been upheld by the Ombudsman.

Kirsty said; "These figures are all the more worrying as they come at a time when the number of student complaints have been on the increase, with a rise of 44% in 2006 alone. Complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) range from issues about the quality and quantity of tuition to disputing exam results and disability access and clearly universities need to address these on their individual merit."

"Complaints to the OIA are made after the grievance has already been put through a University's internal procedure and are often a last resort. Whilst these high figures are undoubtedly partially as a result of student's increased awareness of the OIA they are also very revealing of Universities inadequate complaints processes and clearly these systems need to be examined and improved to ensure that students across the UK , who are in many cases paying extreme tuition fees, are getting better value for money across the board."

"It has been said throughout the sector that the increase in complaints and expression of such a 'consumer culture' cannot come as a surprise as the University system is moved bit by bit towards a market structure by the Labour Government. For this reason the Liberal democrats would scrap the unfair and ineffective top-up fees in England, reinstate maintenance grants for low income students, and allocate more resources into the University Sector from lower priority areas of government spending ."

Notes:

Figures were released in the Office of the Independent Adjudicator's annual report

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