Case Summaries
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Case summary October 2023 | Partly Justified
A student was subject to disciplinary proceedings after a complaint was made by other students about their behaviour in a WhatsApp group. Following a disciplinary investigation, the student was excluded from the programme. As a goodwill gesture, the provider offered the student a tuition fee refund.
The student complained to us about a lack of fair process and said the allegations were false. We partly upheld the complaint (we decided it was Partly Justified). We concluded that the provider correctly followed its procedures and it was reasonable to conclude that the student had breached the code of conduct. However, it hadn’t adequately explained why the penalty applied was appropriate and why lesser penalties would not have been appropriate.
We recommended that the provider offer to review the penalty applied at review stage. The provider said that if the student declined the offer or if the student was still excluded from the programme after the review, it would offer a refund of tuition fees. We made a Good Practice Recommendation that the provider review its non-academic misconduct policy, particularly the section about penalties.