Coronavirus: Students Could Win Financial Compensation For Lost Teaching Time During Lockdown
Students could be awarded financial compensation for lost teaching time during the first Covid-19 lockdown after the higher education complaints watchdog told an institution to pay up.
The Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA), which looks at complaints across higher education, has recommended a provider should pay back hundreds of pounds to a student due to lockdown disruption.
The watchdog has so far received just under 200 complaints from students about the disruption to their university experience caused by Covid-19.
The OIA has said there is a time lag in complaints being logged with it as students have to first raise their complaint with their university.
Ellen Packham is in her second year studying Psychology at the University of Northampton.
The 20-year-old told HuffPost UK she will be seeking compensation because of how the pandemic has affected both her learning and her mental health.
She said: “At the end of my first year, when Covid-19 first hit, we got barely any online teaching. When the university closed, we went from face-to-face teaching everyday to nothing – and we had assignments and exams to do.
“I remember sitting at home and my mum asking me ’Don’t you have lectures to do?′ and I’d say no because my university wasn’t putting any on.
“I used to FaceTime every night with my best friend and the majority of our calls until first year was over were along the lines of: ’I don’t understand the work’, ‘I don’t understand what I have to do’ and ‘Why aren’t we having any lectures?’
“I blagged my way through my exams and assignments because we had no help at all – it was a massive shock to the system.”
In June, thousands of students who missed out on their education due to the lockdown were urged to sign up to “mass action” to win compensation.
The National Union of Students (NUS) demanded debt relief and compensation for those whose studies have been disrupted when university campuses were forced to close....