Decision Report 201300423

Summary

Mr C had been diagnosed with dyslexia and visual stress. He complained that the university had not provided him with the support he needed for his additional learning needs and that his support had been reduced. This caused him great anxiety as he approached his final exams. He complained to the university but they did not uphold his complaint, and he felt that it was not reasonably handled.

Our investigation found that there were a number of areas, including assessment and agreed support hours, where his needs were not addressed and reasonable adjustments were not made. We also found that his additional needs were not addressed throughout the complaints handling process, including how support records were used, and that his recognised difficulties in processing information were ignored. We upheld Mr C's complaint and made a number of recommendations to address this.

Recommendations

We recommended that the university:

• apologise for not providing the support required to meet Mr C's needs;
• review how any failure to meet Mr C's support needs may have had a negative impact on his final year assessed work;
• review all instruments of assessment to ensure they are suitable for students with support needs; and
• review the Enabling Support ES15 form and how the Enabling Support activity log is used to ensure that students know and understand the recorded detail.