About 5,000 students have signed up to pursue a lawsuit to be indemnified for lost of teaching time during the university lock down.The claim involves students from some of the highly reputable institutions across the United Kingdom which might cost each university as much as £20m.
This as a result of 14 days of
teaching lost when staff, including
lecturers, academics and researchers, from 65 universities went on strike in
February and March in a disagreement over pensions.
The University and College Union
estimated that the walk out action – which was put off in April – affected more than one million students and an
estimation of 575,000 teaching hours were wasted.
Asserson, a law firm has set up a website
for learners to claim compensation for lost teaching, it has had around 500
students accepting its group action each week since its launch in March this year.
And the firm is sure that the group
claim for students – whose fees are up to
£9,250 a year in tuition if they are
from UK and much more if they are not from EU – will be a success.
A senior lawyer at Asserson Shimon
Goldwater, , said: “The compensation claim against universities is building
rapidly. Not only are we receiving 500 new sign ups a week, a leading
barrister’s advice reaffirms our long-held view that that this claim is likely
to succeed.”
“The size of this claim, based on
£1,000 compensation per student, has already risen to £5m, with the potential
to hit £20m,” he added.
The schools with the most student
sign-ups to the claim website include four Russell Group institutions –
Nottingham, Durham, King’s College London and Bristol together with Kent.
Xavier Alexis-Greenfield, a law student at Kent University, said he lost so much during his exams in May after he missed
out on 14 days of important contact time
ahead of the assignments.
The 19-year-old Xavier, who is on
scholarship, has to excel in his exams to ensure he still gets financial
support. And his chances of becoming a lawyer could be hampered if his grades
fall.
Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, born
Alexis-Greenfield, said: “Those 14 days were the last two weeks of our teaching
for the whole year. So we turned up to the exams lost.
“That put me at risk especially
because the lectures and seminars that were missing were the ones that were
examined,” . “We don’t know how we have done.
“We feel that universities across
the country could have done more to alleviate the stresses on students,”
Alexis-Greenfield stated.” Missed lectures and seminars could have been
rescheduled and exams could have been pushed back in third term to allow for
more contact time, .
“You do feel like the money you have
paid has kind of been wasted,” the law student said.
Universities minister Sam Gyimah in
February, said “students should be directly compensated after tens of thousands
of students signed petitions demanding refunds for lost lectures
, a student at Nottingham
University second-year student of philosophy, Joanna Moss started the petition
for compensation after she missed out on 20 hours of lectures.
“As consumers, we must protest against losing
what we have paid for,” she stated in official written request
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