Give us a truly fair and impartial student complaints system!

I'm impressed, that site is a very good start and is exactly what I think is needed.

In order to be taken seriously in the future, you should consider switching it to a more professional sounding URL.

The flowchart converges to "get a solicitor" (unless it's not displaying properly in my browser). But telling students they have no alternative option but to get a solicitor, it puts off the ones with no money and no access to legal aid. I think that should be expanded with an alternative branch for Litigants in Person.

If and when you expand the legal information on there, don't depict it as professional legal advice. Also don't depict it as the advice of a solicitor or try to get a solicitor to support/contribute directly to the advice. It needs to be a research tool for students to learn from and use themselves, not legal advice.

The reason I say that is solicitors have an overriding duty to the court and the greater interests of justice. They give advice to assist their clients, but above all their advice has to be given with regard to and respect for the court. For example they genuinely advice you to pursue an appeals process in good faith and expecting to avoid court.

So a solicitor can't look at the case law in the way I do, with total bad faith and knowledge that every preceding stage will fail. I think this is in fact why a lot of students with solicitors come unstuck. The truth is you have to know that your complaint might indeed fail at every stage until you get to court, and base your strategy on that in order to get you to court in the best shape and position you possibly can be. Then if by some miracle you succeeded beforehand its a happy surprise.

The best way to succeed before court is to act nicely with the person hearing the appeal and show respect to them. This makes sense. So it's in the interests of justice that all people do so... as that leads to the least number of court cases. What we would be doing is to act nicely up to the first instant that the person acts in bad faith towards you. Then you politely kick their ass with complaints, questions, objections, demands for replies, and so on. That's how to create a convincing case for you to win in court. But it can never be what a solicitor should advise you to do or else the courts will get overloaded with cases.

How deeche does the student afford this process?

I'm impressed, that site is a very good start and is exactly what I think is needed.

In order to be taken seriously in the future, you should consider switching it to a more professional sounding URL.

The flowchart converges to "get a solicitor" (unless it's not displaying properly in my browser). But telling students they have no alternative option but to get a solicitor, it puts off the ones with no money and no access to legal aid. I think that should be expanded with an alternative branch for Litigants in Person.

If and when you expand the legal information on there, don't depict it as professional legal advice. Also don't depict it as the advice of a solicitor or try to get a solicitor to support/contribute directly to the advice. It needs to be a research tool for students to learn from and use themselves, not legal advice.

The reason I say that is solicitors have an overriding duty to the court and the greater interests of justice. They give advice to assist their clients, but above all their advice has to be given with regard to and respect for the court. For example they genuinely advice you to pursue an appeals process in good faith and expecting to avoid court.

So a solicitor can't look at the case law in the way I do, with total bad faith and knowledge that every preceding stage will fail. I think this is in fact why a lot of students with solicitors come unstuck. The truth is you have to know that your complaint might indeed fail at every stage until you get to court, and base your strategy on that in order to get you to court in the best shape and position you possibly can be. Then if by some miracle you succeeded beforehand its a happy surprise.

The best way to succeed before court is to act nicely with the person hearing the appeal and show respect to them. This makes sense. So it's in the interests of justice that all people do so... as that leads to the least number of court cases. What we would be doing is to act nicely up to the first instant that the person acts in bad faith towards you. Then you politely kick their ass with complaints, questions, objections, demands for replies, and so on. That's how to create a convincing case for you to win in court. But it can never be what a solicitor should advise you to do or else the courts will get overloaded with cases.

I have been to see a Barrister today and armed with many of your points I managed to get some of my questions in and find out where I stand, I have six months from the time of the discrimination to lodge the case with court because of appeals and complaints that time is nearly up. It will be lodged this week. There are a few things to iron out and the cost is enormous but I don't think I could just sit back and let them destroy me. Unfortunately I also don't think I could go it alone. I wish there was a cheaper way to get justice.

Haha they will never overrule their decision. But you definitely have to comment on their draft decision and refute each of the reasons they use to support the decision, point out any factual errors, point out where they have not checked a disputed fact against documentary evidence, everything you can to discredit that decision. You should even ask for an extension of time to submit the comments if you can come up with a good reason.

They will consider you comments, perhaps alter their reasons a bit, then come to the same decisions as before. That will be their final decision which you are not allowed to comment on. The court time-limits will be extended from the date of that final decision.

If you took the OIA to court, then they have the power to restart their whole process afresh as an attempt to avoid going to court. But you're quite sensibly not taking the OIA to court, so as far as you are concerned the final decision is final.

Get working on those comments.

hi again deech

The decision does not make any reference to being a draft decision, its titled " Complaint Outcome" and " Decision Not Justified".
However it say " if you believe the complaint outcome contain any factual errors that would materially affect the outcome of your complaint of if you wish to make any other comment in response to it, then do so in writing.

The problem is that I have been writing my response for the last 3 hours and I am yet nowhere near finishing. I hope to finish them by tomorrow. I feel bad that I had to spend so much time to correct this " professional" guy who is being paid for what he isn't good at doing,.

What would happen if I was not to make any comment and take the case to County Court, would I be penalised?

hi again deech

The decision does not make any reference to being a draft decision, its titled " Complaint Outcome" and " Decision Not Justified".
However it say " if you believe the complaint outcome contain any factual errors that would materially affect the outcome of your complaint of if you wish to make any other comment in response to it, then do so in writing.

The problem is that I have been writing my response for the last 3 hours and I am yet nowhere near finishing. I hope to finish them by tomorrow. I feel bad that I had to spend so much time to correct this " professional" guy who is being paid for what he isn't good at doing,.

What would happen if I was not to make any comment and take the case to County Court, would I be penalised?

I wonder whether it would be worth you just stating which paragraphs have material inaccuracies, without actually supplying the reason why those material inaccuracies are in fact inaccurate, and stating that you require them to reconsider their findings based on materially accurate information which you will supply to them once you have their agreement? It's probably not worth the gamble, because they are deliberate scammers, but it's probably the best chance you will get from them. (Just accept that you have no chance at all, it will be easier on your mental health in the long run...and then listen to Deech!)

Hi kazm25

I'd just like to inform you that I spent an enormous amount of time (the entire time allowed) in putting my case that the entire Draft Decision document (as it was called back in 2010/11), was full of material inaccuracies, (and intimated that as such it was not a valid decision.) They addressed that simply by re-writing a large number of paragraphs, and without reassessing what impact those changes had, simply re-issued the amended document with their original decision. This is what they said:

"...Having further reviewed our file and the representations received, we have made substantive amendments to paragraphs 15, 24, 25, 30, 31, 34 to 37, 42, 43, 45 to 48, 50 and 53 of our Draft Decision...This brings the OIA's involvement in your complaint to an end..." That's at least SEVENTEEN materially inaccurate paragraphs!!

Note that, having amended such a large section of their decision, there was no facility for me to agree the accuracy of the new insertions. That surely is unlawful???

I wonder whether it would be worth you just stating which paragraphs have material inaccuracies, without actually supplying the reason why those material inaccuracies are in fact inaccurate, and stating that you require them to reconsider their findings based on materially accurate information which you will supply to them once you have their agreement? It's probably not worth the gamble, because they are deliberate scammers, but it's probably the best chance you will get from them. (Just accept that you have no chance at all, it will be easier on your mental health in the long run...and then listen to Deech!)

That would be a bare denial, which would get thrown out if you were in a court. The result would likely be the same with the OIA. You do need to give a substantive reply to their draft decision.

One strategy would be to sit down and say right, let me assume I'm taking the OIA to court for Judicial Review. How would I challenge their decision, on what Judicial Review grounds can I get it quashed?
1. They "ignored relevant considerations". List all the things they didn't take into account, and use that phrase as the OIA will know you're talking about Judicial Review grounds.
2. They took into account "irrelevant considerations". Again list stuff they mentioned to support their decision which wasn't relevant. Maybe they used medical evidence to portray you in a bad light. Stuff like that.
3. They made "errors of fact". In other words lies. Either prove they are lies by reference to evidence. Or state that you disputed these facts, the OIA have not investigated or reviewed the evidence on the issue, but have just made an assumption on which facts to believe, and you would like that to be made clear. This will open the door for you to go to the County Court and say you need the facts to be determined.

Remember for each ground or comment you make, you need to have a line explaining how it had a material effect, in other words that the decision would potentially have been different. It's no good pointing out a lie without pointing out the way it effected the decision.

Pick out 2 or 3 key mistakes in their reasons, and go to town on them. Then all the rest you can deal with briefly. Or even in a table. So write a few pages of damning commentary on the important points. Then all the other inaccuracies list in a table with a few lines in each box.....

Paragraph | Inaccuracy | Referred Evidence | Material effect on outcome

1
2
3

... and so on

There is no justice within Uni or OIA just accept it and move on to court. xx

That would be a bare denial, which would get thrown out if you were in a court. The result would likely be the same with the OIA. You do need to give a substantive reply to their draft decision.

One strategy would be to sit down and say right, let me assume I'm taking the OIA to court for Judicial Review. How would I challenge their decision, on what Judicial Review grounds can I get it quashed?
1. They "ignored relevant considerations". List all the things they didn't take into account, and use that phrase as the OIA will know you're talking about Judicial Review grounds.
2. They took into account "irrelevant considerations". Again list stuff they mentioned to support their decision which wasn't relevant. Maybe they used medical evidence to portray you in a bad light. Stuff like that.
3. They made "errors of fact". In other words lies. Either prove they are lies by reference to evidence. Or state that you disputed these facts, the OIA have not investigated or reviewed the evidence on the issue, but have just made an assumption on which facts to believe, and you would like that to be made clear. This will open the door for you to go to the County Court and say you need the facts to be determined.

Remember for each ground or comment you make, you need to have a line explaining how it had a material effect, in other words that the decision would potentially have been different. It's no good pointing out a lie without pointing out the way it effected the decision.

Pick out 2 or 3 key mistakes in their reasons, and go to town on them. Then all the rest you can deal with briefly. Or even in a table. So write a few pages of damning commentary on the important points. Then all the other inaccuracies list in a table with a few lines in each box.....

Paragraph | Inaccuracy | Referred Evidence | Material effect on outcome

1
2
3

... and so on

Hi deech
Thank you so much for your useful advise and comments. Still haven't finished my response to OIA, but I wonder if you could help with the followings?
In terms of addressing to an "error of fact" or where the OIA have disregarded relevant considerations, how would you say that this would have had a material effect on the outcome.

Are there any particular way of saying that someone else would have reached a different conclusion i.e a "reasonable man" or an informed adjudicator" test or something similar.
For instances where there has been an "error of fact" and "disregarded relevant consideration" as well as actin on his own personal assumption.

Would be grateful for any help

many thanks

So disappointing to hear these stories, can't we arrange a demonstration or something similar to give this injustice s to us a little more publicity like!
I bit there are quite a few of us to draw the attention of some media giants in this country.

The issue is that the OIAHE are not fit for purpose and need to be abolished. You have also indicated that if this issue were proved to be widespread you would get actively involved. Well how do you suppose someone would "prove" something to be widespread if people like you demand to know what the issue is and go around the Internet trying to dig up dirt at every given opportunity, and take the issue away from the main point??

Also, for your information, the system did not work as it should. If my case was not justified then I should not have been awarded anything! My case was clearly justified, else I would not have been entitled to be compensated. The resolution offered was a clear attempt to whitewash what was a vicious attack on me which was intended to take me out of the job market in my field, which succeeded, and for which I require to be compensated properly!

Furthermore, I accepted my degree at a time when I was unaware of having been cheated with the downgrading of my mark. I tore up that degree certificate and sent it back to the university when I discovered I had been downgraded. I do not accept that work which is declared "flawless" (i.e perfect) becomes worth only 64% when it is done by me. The ONLY resolution for that part of my complaint would have been to re-mark my work!

I am not sure what your issue with me complaining to excessive hits on my website from Turnitin actually is. Do you know?