Students and apprentices who have faced disruption to their education during the coronavirus pandemic are being encouraged to share their experiences with the National Union of Students (NUS).
The union said it would use the concerns raised to urge the government to offer affected students debt relief, financial compensation or the ability to redo a proportion of their studies at no extra cost.
Claire Sosienski Smith, NUS vice president for higher education, said that students needed to come forward if they felt they had not received, or been able to access, adequate university education this term.
She said: “We know that there are students who can’t access their education right now. Many should be receiving training and education in subjects that can’t be delivered remotely, others are paying tuition fees while working on the NHS frontline, and many disabled students require reasonable adjustments that just can’t be catered for through online learning - this action is for those students. We need to hear from you.
“We know the scale of the disruption has been so vast that we need a national sector-wide response from government for this including funding from Westminster. Even if students complain to their individual institutions, how will universities afford it when the UK government haven’t announced a single penny of additional funding to support them? Our plea to the UK government is clear: you must offer tangible help to students who can’t access their education right now.”
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According to the NUS, around 20 per cent of students have been unable to access learning at all during Covid-19, and 33 per cent of those who have been able to access it do not believe it to be good quality.
NUS says that their data shows that “hundreds of thousands” of students could have strong cases for making complaints, including 21 per cent of disabled students who have not been able to receive reasonable adjustments remotely and 75 per cent of students with placements who felt Covid-19 would negatively impact them.
The government has said that individual students with complaints about teaching should complain to their institutions and then, failing that, the Office for the Independent Adjudicator.
However, NUS says that this is not a workable solution for students or institutions. It says that institutions are facing significant financial challenges due to Covid-19 and will struggle to foot the bill without government support.
NUS president Zamzam Ibrahim said that, so far, students had been ignored.
She said: “Students have racked up tens of thousands of pounds of debt to access once-in-a-lifetime university education courses. Is it unreasonable for them to want a fair response from government on something they’ve invested so much time and money into?
“We’ve warned the UK government and education leaders repeatedly that the scale of student anger is too large to be handled through existing local processes. But they have not listened to our concerns, so NUS’s job is to take action in the best interests of students.”
