Source · SPSO (Scottish Public Services Ombudsman)

University of the West of Scotland

SPSO (Scottish Public Services Ombudsman) Partly Upheld Reference 201500849 Sector Education Category policy/administration Decided 01 October 2015

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Full decision

Summary

Mr C complained that his university unreasonably required him to re-attend for a whole academic year, after he failed to submit a piece of coursework for a module. Mr C was also unhappy with the university's handling of his complaint.

We found that Mr C assumed he could re-sit the coursework at the end of the academic year. However, university regulations said that, in the circumstances, Mr C was required to re-attend. Mr C, as an enrolled student, was bound by university regulations and had confirmed his acceptance of them. Therefore, he had to re-attend. We did not uphold this part of Mr C's complaint.

We found some failings in the adminstration of Mr C's complaint, where the university had not followed their complaints procedure in respect of stage one of the process. We upheld this part of Mr C's complaint.

Recommendations

We recommended that the university: remind relevant staff of the stage one process in their complaints handling procedure.

Related reading

View Decision Report 201500849 as a PDF (11.98 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018

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