Governance News Alert: Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) Annual Report 2025

The OIA, headed by Helen Megarry, has published its annual report giving details of the volume of complaints handled in 2025, decisions, outcomes and trends. It includes a number of case studies of actual complaints and the actions taken, as well as some recommendations to providers on how to improve complaints procedures.

The full report can be found here.

At-a-glance:

• 4,234 complaints were made to the OIA in 2025, the first time the number has exceeded 4,000 in a single year and up 17 per cent on 2024. It resolved 3,950 complaints, more than in any previous year (p4)
• One in five students received a favourable outcome: 20 per cent of closed complaints were justified, partly justified or settled (p6)
• Universities, colleges and other providers were recommended to pay a total of more than £1.8million in compensation to students who complained to the OIA during 2025. £875,933 was offered to students when cases were judged to be justified or partly justified. £962,979 was offered in settlements between students and providers before a formal decision was reached (p7)
• The largest single payments were £38,000 as part of a settlement, and £15,600 in a recommendation following a review. A total of 165 students received £5,000 or more, of whom 26 received £10,000 or more. Many of these higher amounts included partial tuition fee refunds, while others are for disappointment or distress and inconvenience (p42)
• Academic appeals remained the biggest complaint category in 2025. Service issues increased from 30 to 33 per cent of complaints closed, pointing to ongoing pressure in individual provider delivery and complaint handling (p6)
• In more than two-thirds of the academic appeal complaints in 2025, students who raised a personal circumstance said it had impacted on their ability to engage with their learning or perform well in assessments. Students often raise other concerns alongside their personal circumstances, for example about the quality of teaching, supervision, feedback or pastoral support (p20)
• 42 per cent of students complaining to the OIA disclosed a disability. Complaints involving reasonable adjustments were more likely to be upheld or settled. Cases where agreed support was not implemented properly, where communication was unclear, or where responsibility for putting support in place was not sufficiently well understood, continued to arise (p7)
• Failure to provide reasonable adjustments featured in 20 per cent of the justified cases involving disabled students. Around 11 per cent of the academic appeals referred to disability support (p7, p25)
• A high proportion of the complaints involving harassment and sexual misconduct continue to be upheld. Although the number of complaints about harassment and sexual misconduct has risen, as a proportion of overall cases it is consistent with recent years at just above five per cent (p18)
• International students remained overrepresented in complaints, especially in cases involving fees, refunds, deposits, attendance and visa-related issues. These trends cut across different course types (p7)
• Recommendations to providers include training for staff in the principles of procedural fairness - including how to gather and test evidence, apply standards of proof and provide clear reasons for decisions, and ensuring staff consult appropriately with other services a student may be engaging with eg disability support (p43)

Implications for governance:

The 17 per cent jump in complaints to the OIA in 2025, on the back of yearly increases over the last decade, demonstrates a system “under growing strain”, according to Helen Megarry, Independent Adjudicator of Higher Education in England and Wales

While only one in five of the cases brought were justified, partly justified or settled, every payout is “an indication that a student has not received the service they expect” at a time when fees and cost of living pressures are increasing, she added. The report said that the cases brought are “the tip of the iceberg” of unhappy students who have first negotiated the complaints procedures of their own university before turning to the OIA and engaging once again.

Governors may be familiar with some of the issues around complaints that are highlighted in the report again this year, such as time delays in dealing with complaints, shortcomings in published information about courses and/or what is expected of students, and a lack of clear communications with the complainant during the process.

The OIA points out that the complaints system is resource-intensive for providers and not always well understood by students. Institutions are “making efforts to increase accessibility and flexibility” but the volume of cases and the nature of the complaints suggest not all efforts are successful.

Once again, international students disproportionately feature in the number of complaints: a worrying sign at a time where it is increasingly important for institutions to build and maintain a strong reputation overseas. The OIA points out that institutions often show some flexibility for students who have engaged with them proactively when difficulties have arisen. Unfortunately, sometimes students can ignore important communications about the help that is available until it is too late. The OIA recommends that even though providers’ discretion may be limited by their obligations as visa sponsors, institutions must still provide a route for students to challenge decisions relating to their attendance or fee payments. 

A key trend highlighted in the report is the very high volumes of requests students are making for additional consideration of personal circumstances, which feeds through into the complaints the OIA sees. 

A consistent pattern is that students do not engage with processes to notify staff that they are experiencing some difficulty at the point when it is most appropriate for action to be taken. The consequences for individual students can be significant particularly where late engagement results in missed opportunity for support or adjustment. 

Institutions are encouraged to work with student representative bodies to ensure that all students understand how and when to seek support if they do not feel able to perform at their best in an assessment. Governing boards may want to consider whether their institutions have effective ways of stressing to students the need for timely engagement and sufficient mechanisms to provide advice and guidance, particularly to ensure that international students understand this process.

More than 40 per cent of complaints brought to the OIA come from students declaring a disability. Failure to provide reasonable adjustments remains a prominent issue, featuring in 20 per cent of justified cases and 23 per cent of partly justified cases the OIA reviewed from disabled students. Where reasonable adjustments were raised, complaints were almost three times as likely to be upheld or settled overall. Delays are also a common feature in complaints about reasonable adjustments. According to the report, this suggests that the difficulty is not simply whether support is available in principle, but whether it is delivered clearly, consistently and at the right time.

As the report says: “Small failures in process can have a significant impact where a student is relying on agreed adjustments.” Governors should therefore consider whether enough attention is being paid to the fine detail of their institution’s complaints processes.

There has been a small rise in the overall proportion of complaints that relate to service issues, from 30 per cent in 2024 to 33 per cent in 2025. The OIA suggests that financial challenges and subsequent changes to staffing levels and the structure of courses, teaching and assessments may be to blame. While this link is not proven, boards may want to be assured that plans are in place to mitigate the potential impact of restructuring.

Although the number of cases this year has increased, the total amount paid out to students in settlements or on the recommendation of the OIA in justified and partly justified cases has dropped, from £2.5 million in 2024 to £1.8 million in 2025.

The OIA says this difference suggests that providers may be more restrained in offering financial settlements but that there is no evidence of a decline in the overall quality of decision-making during a providers’ internal procedures.