Universities told to refund half of students’ tuition fees for failing to make up missed lectures during strikes

'Some universities have done nothing and we don’t think that’s fair,' adjudicator says

Students should be refunded at least 50 per cent of their tuition fees for lost teaching time by universities that failed to minimise the disruption caused by last year’s lecturer strikes, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator has said.

The independent body which looks at complaints across higher education, said that was the “starting point” for those affected.

Fourteen days of teaching were lost when staff, including lecturers and academics, from 65 universities across the UK walked out early last year in a dispute over pensions.

The University and College Union estimated that the action, which was called off in April, affected more than 1 million students and a total of 575,000 teaching hours were lost.

Case summaries, published on the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) website, show that some universities have been better at making up lost learning by providing lecture recordings and podcasts.

“Others have done nothing and we don’t think that’s fair," said Felicity Mitchell, the independent adjudicator said. "We have made recommendations in a number of cases for partial refunds of tuition fees and payments for distress and inconvenience where we have decided the student has not been treated fairly."

A batch of reports from the watchdog earlier this year showed that individual universities had been told to refund students hundreds of pounds each.

Experts said at the time that these reports could pave the way for more compensation claims from students, who pay up to £9,250 a year in tuition fees in the UK, and even more if they are outside the European Union.

“We have used a notional value of 50 per cent of the value of the teaching hours as a starting point for working out how much refund to recommend," said Sarah Liddell, head of the leadership office at the OIA.

In one of the new case summaries published, an international student on a master’s programme complained about missed teaching hours and the OIA told the university to refund £1,284 in tuition fees.

Students have up to a year to bring their complaint to the OIA after filing a complaint with the university.