Students sue universities for higher grades

Published on Friday 25 March 2011 12:45

GROWING numbers of students in Scotland are taking legal action against their universities for failing to provide adequate support for degree courses. Six students across the country have taken out cases after receiving lower grades than they expected, according to the legal firm Ross Harper.

A spokesman for the firm said it was dealing with four cases of former students seeking legal action against their university, and added that a further two had settled through the institution's own grievance procedure.

The spokesman said that students now see themselves more as consumers of services and were more likely to complain when they believed university courses were sub-standard.

One student, who has received legal aid to fight her claim, says she is around 10,000 in debt after a year-long course during which her tutor was absent for long periods.

The spokesman said: "This is a growing issue, although we always encourage people to try to resolve the issue through the institution's own systems. The actions tend to be from international students or postgraduates who have to pay fees, but some are from undergraduates whose fees are paid by the Scottish Government.

"For the most part it is people disputing grades but there are people who are simply unhappy with the level of education they received."

The Scottish cases follow the example of Andrew Croskery, a student from Northern Ireland who took landmark legal action against Queen's University Belfast last year when they refused to reclassify his 2:2 degree.

Croskery, from Co Down, launched proceedings after missing out on a 2:1 classification in electrical engineering by half a per cent. His lawyers claimed that if he had received better supervision he would have achieved a higher degree.

Croskery was seeking leave to judicially review decisions by the Board of Examiners at the university. Last December, a High Court judge dismissed Croskery's case, arguing that it should remain exclusively within the jurisdiction of the university's own appeals body.

But the Scottish lawyers argue that each case is different.

In 2002, a mature law student, Mike Austin, was awarded 30,000 by the University of Wolverhampton in an out-of-court settlement with his catalogue of grievances including crowded lecture halls, poorly drafted exams papers and inflated promises.

One student engaged in legal action in Scotland is Penny Anderson, who has already won legal aid to pay for her case against her former university, Glasgow School of Art.

She has a number of complaints about the institution, ranging from a failure to acknowledge her disability - she is partially sighted - to a failure to provide teaching support.She says her one-year Master of Research in Creative Practice course changed course leader four times, and that one supervisor was away for six weeks at a time when she required support for her dissertation.

She said: "When I originally applied, I told them I was partially sighted, but when I arrived the lecturers didn't seem to know anything about it.

"I filled in four disability forms while I was there and still I would receive things handwritten by lecturers that I couldn't read despite agreements they would type things for me. "And my supervisor disappeared for six weeks of a 15-week semester."

Anderson is disputing her grade, despite achieving a merit, the second highest award.

She said: "I think I may have got a distinction if the course had been better organised, and grades matter when the course is supposed to be preparation for a PhD."

Liam Burns, the president of NUS Scotland, said: "People shouldn't have to resort to court action to get the high-quality experience they expect from universities in Scotland.

"Too often we hear of institutions prioritising research work over teaching, leaving students and the taxpayer with a raw deal and threatening the quality of graduates we produce."