Advice please - any recourse for students affected by university staff strikes?

[OrangeTulips]

That’s it really.

totally see that university staff have the right to strike, however the student body who really suffer from no face to face learning are so unfairly affected - for example my daughter has coursework due for a topic she’s received no lectures in due to strikes so effectively paying the university to teach her self. And she’s now discovered they’re striking pretty much all the way through til Christmas.

anyone know who they should/can complain to at the university? Surely they should be due some refund of the tuition fees? Otherwise, the staff strike, the university doesn’t pay them, but they still receive all the students fees so are in fact making money during this time and it’s only the students who are really suffering. I know that’s ignoring the staff who aren’t being paid but that is their choice…

don’t want to start a discussion on the rights and wrongs of striking, just want to know how I can support my daughter the best during this unsettling time for her.

thank you.

Their complaints policy will be on the website. Once you’ve (her!) exhausted that, if she is still not happy she can complain to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator. They may require some of her fees are repaid - but a) it’ll take a long time - a year or more, b) any refund of fees will (assuming she had a fee loan) go straight back to SLC, and c) won’t actually address the current issue.

She should contact the SU, also her Faculty admin or course rep or Head of Teaching. There could be come sort of mitigation with how her assignments are marked for example.

Yes she can and should complain

the students union could be a good source of support. So if it were me personally I’d initially complain to the head of school but also copy in someone higher up….there will be someone with a job title like deputy pro vice chancellor (for student experience). Get googling to look at the structure of the senior leadership team and pick someone.

My daughter made a massive complaint when she was at university. Not actually about strikes but they forgot to teach an entire module and didn’t realise until Dd told them they’d had no teaching for an assessment due in the following month. A member of staff had left and nobody thought to pick their module/teaching up. They then didn’t follow university published criteria for assessment for a different module and for that second module failed two thirds of the cohort a couple of months before the end of the degree. Dd wrote a 70 page letter of complaint and had multiple meetings with the deputy pro vice chancellor. Ended up getting every student an uncapped remark, £1000 payment and free entry to graduation (didn’t have to pay for gowns). I believe the money refund is extremely unusual. DD’s course was professionally accredited and Dd threatened to report them to the governing body which possibly had some impact.

I haven’t heard of any universities refunding tuition fees due to strikes but to be honest they wouldn’t publicise it. I think your Dd needs to certainly be asking for mitigating circumstances/allowance in the marking for this assessment. For example I don’t feel a low grade should impact on overall degree classification if they’ve had no teaching!

With Dd the £1000 payment went straight into their bank accounts, they said it was too complicated to actually refund tuition fees.

Looks like some universities have refunded tuition fees due to strikes

https://enquire.ncl.ac.uk/en/how-do-i-get-a-fees-refund

What uni?

Thanks all. I’ll pass this all on to her. 💐