Our Good Practice Framework sets out principles and operational guidance to support higher education providers in England and Wales. It is the cornerstone of our work to promote good practice. It draws on our broad experience in handling complaints, and informs the way we consider complaints.
The Framework currently has six sections: Handling complaints and academic appeals, Delivering learning opportunities with others, Supporting disabled students, Requests for additional consideration, Disciplinary procedures, and Fitness to practise.
We regularly review and update the Framework to make sure that it continues to be relevant and current. In 2022 we developed and consulted on a revised version of the Handling complaints and academic appeals section of the Framework. This is the original section of the Framework, and was last updated in 2016. In January and February, we held a series of informal webinar discussions to help inform the initial stages of our review, with attendees from 67 providers and student representative bodies. We then consulted on the draft revised section. We are grateful to everyone from providers, student representative bodies and sector organisations whose feedback informed the final version, and to our Good Practice Framework Steering Group for their valuable input.
The main developments in the revised section are:
- We updated the language of the principles, and separated them into a standalone part of the Good Practice Framework to make it clearer that they apply across all sections of the Framework
- We created an additional document to explain what we mean when we talk about bias, in response to feedback that identified this as a key area where clarification would be helpful
- We developed the guidance on what to do when more than one process might apply, complaints about student representative bodies, complaints about behaviour of staff or other students, and group complaints
- We brought together the guidance on the process for both complaints and appeals to help avoid duplication – but still drawing distinctions between the two processes where necessary.
We published the final updated version in December.
In 2023 we plan to consult on and publish an updated version of the Delivering learning opportunities with others section.
