1. Complaints issues Andrew Okey Graduate School Forum, 11/02/09

2. Complaint Route - Informal contact with relevant staff - Formal complaint to HoD - ‘Neutral’ review - Final review (PVC) - OIA - Judicial review

3. General issues - Awareness of complaints procedure is sketchy - How to define a “complaint” - Lack of monitoring of early stage complaints - Problems of internal routing - Adversarial nature of process - Status of outcomes - Overlaps with purely academic processes

4. Role of OIA - General case increase/trends - Lancaster’s record - Focus on procedures - Concept of what is ‘reasonable’

5. Postgraduate complaint statistics(1) PGR: 16 cases logged, of which 6 have reached stage two PGT: 10 cases, 3 at stage two UG: 23 cases, 3 at stage two

6. Postgraduate complaint statistics(2) Academic-related complaints: PGR: 9 cases, of which 5 have reached stage two PGT: 8 cases, 3 at stage two UG: 9 cases, 1 at stage two OIA report disproportionate number of cases are raised by postgraduates

7. Postgraduate issues (1) - developing trend of PGT students to challenge classification - 8 out of 9 PGR cases revolved around supervision issues - University’s contractual position in relation to supervision - Conduct of upgrade panels, exam boards etc

8. Postgraduate issues (2) - Breaches of internal regulations/procedures - Failure to alert students to quality issues - Compensation costs