Thanks Paul - you saved me from rattling off a long response.
At Sunderland the person who accompanies must be chosen from the 'university community'.
The University is generally quite good about advising students to seek help and assistance from the Students Union in procedural matters and the welfare and academic advisors employed by the Students Union have appropriate professional backgrounds and are able to accompany and represent a student through the procedures.
In my experience the students who have consulted solicitors without going through the university processes first, usually find that the solicitor has no idea of the procedures in place in the university, whereas someone from the university community has that working knowledge. There are also few educational specialist solicitors dealing with Higher Education in the North-East, so access and cost are an issue.
My main objectives are to ensure that the student is fairly heard and treated, in a timely, transparent, reasoned manner with the least amount of cost whilst protecting the students legal position. I am not sure that by involving a solicitor at an early stage whether those objectives would be maintained especially in terms of cost to the student and time especially when any time lost from study has negative consequences for the student.
"Hubert, Paul [STU]" wrote:
> Janusz wrote "the student has a right to be "accompanied" by a person of his/her choosing - which is not to say the student can be represented by this person. Indeed, my view is that it would be improper for that to be the case as the whole point of such a hearing is that the student is putting his/her own case for consideration and the proceedings are definitely NOT adversarial in nature."
>
> I disagree with this and think that it is an improper suggestion that will generally lead to unfairness. I think this issue puts Precepts 3 and 9 of the QAA CoP in conflict with each other. (I should declare an interest because I would expect to act as a representative in these circumstances. I say 'would' because our institution does not offer the student a direct hearing in these circumstances, which may well also be unfair (whether or not the Human Rights Act applies in this context).)
>
> In the case of Academic Appeals or Reviews, the procedures will be conducted by people who may have been involved in the decision at issue or by colleagues of those who are. They will be advised and possibly accompanied by people who are experienced in the institution's conduct of these matters and the same is likely to apply to staff witnesses. The issues involved may include a variety of complex issues of which the student may have no prior experience, such as procedural propriety and fairness in other procedures (e.g. relating to mitigating circumstances or plagiarism), questions of evidence, procedural fairness etc. They may well be adversarial in the sense that the HEI's own conduct is being challenged as the ground of review or appeal. This should include the right to challenge evidence (e.g. cross examine). The student cannot be expected to be alert to all the issues - after all, the academics involved often aren't. It would lead to procedural unfairness ('inequalit!
y !
> of arms') if the student cannot be represented and probably won't impress a court if they get as far as judicial review. This is not to say that such a representative should give evidence on the student's behalf (any more than a TU rep should give evidence on a staff member's behalf).
>
> Whether a lawyer should fulfil this role is a different question. If they always did this I'd be on my way to being out of a job! From the point of view of the student, the point is that if they are not allowed to use a lawyer there has to be a realistic alternative available. Parents or new-in-post elected Union officers may not be up to the role, so that may mean that you need to make sure that your Students Union employs some troublemakers like me! If there is no alternative to the use of lawyers, the expense may be "reasonable and proportionate" given the importance of the decision to the student - certainly more reasonable and proportionate for the institution than the possible costs involved in judicial review. I would therefore suggest that it is in the interests of HEIs to ensure that fairness is obtained early and cheaply through representation where the student wishes to have it.
>
> So that you can see that it's not just the likes of me who see a key role for representation, I recommend looking at the Bristol ARMED project's document on this:
>
> http://armed.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/intranet/files/17/template/index_html
>
> Paul Hubert
> Welfare Officer
> Leeds Metropolitan University Students Union Student Advice Service
> B Building
> Leeds Metropolitan University
> City Campus
> Leeds LS1 3HE.
> ============================
> Tel 0113 209 8408
> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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