Wales should avoid making the same mistakes as England on student protection

We were told that its new regulatory framework would create an environment in which providers fully meet their obligations to students as consumers, while supporting students to build an understanding of their corresponding rights.

Three key measures were introduced to this end.

One was to require providers to take part in the Office of the Independent Adjudicator alternative dispute resolution scheme. No controversies there – providers had been doing that already.

The second was on Student Protection Plans – which were supposed to set out what students could expect to happen in the event of course, campus or department closure, or if an institution exited the market.

And the third was to set a condition of registration requiring providers to demonstrate that, in developing the policies and procedures governing their contractual and other relationships with students, they had given “due regard” to relevant guidance as to how to comply with consumer protection law. Make promises, and keep them.

One of the interesting things about the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022 is that it pretty much adopted the same approach.

Part 5 of the Act requires there to be a complaints procedure and participation in the OIA scheme. Having a Learner Protection Plan (if Medr asks for one) is a condition of funding, and is supposed to “protect learner interests in the event of a course ceasing to be provided”, and facilitate transfer. And the draft regulations for the Act set up a condition relating to the information provided to prospective students about the provider, its courses, and its terms and conditions of contracts with students.

It’s the same approach. The problem? It doesn’t work.

When the Department for Education (DfE) submitted its report to facilitate post-legislative scrutiny of HERA17 by the Education Select Committee in 2022, it pretty much ignored all three areas.

That’s probably because there’s little evidence of success. Unlike in other countries, nobody is required to implement the OIA’s Good Practice Framework – and providers are free to “deal or no deal” their way out of resolving issues properly. And nobody has put much thought into making the regime – either locally or nationally – work for international PGTs.

Student Protection Plans feel like a complete disaster – barely worth the paper they’re not written on in the event of provider collapse, failing to protect students from major cuts to their programmes, and never designed to tackle serious disruption that doesn’t count as cessation.

And the OfS condition on consumer protection law guidance is pretty much a running joke – where the punchline is a set of case studies on referrals to National Trading Standards that included a ban on not accepting liability for strikes, only for academic year 2024/25 to open with all but 10 (by my count) providers retaining such clauses.

One of OfS’ ongoing excuses for inaction in this area has long been that unlike bodies like the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or Ofcom, it does not have official enforcement powers over consumer protection law. David Behan’s review of the regulator seemed to accept that excuse:

It is the view of the review that the investigatory and consumer enforcement powers that the OfS highlighted as missing from its regulatory toolbox should be considered by DfE, particularly those that would enable the OfS to enact student protection and management of public money as critical functions more directly.

Now, after endless delays, OfS is promising to consult on a new initial condition of registration relating to consumer protection. Who knows if it will get its extra powers.

Given this, we might imagine that Welsh Ministers and/or its new commission may have reflected on the pile-up of failure in England, and be preparing to revise its approach in the implementation delays that are present.

Particularly given that the precarious nature of provider finances in Wales means that it’s more likely, rather than less likely, that corner cutting will see things go wrong.

But Welsh ministers’ statement of strategic priorities for what was then CTER was silent on the area. And Medr’s draft strategy only promises “guidance” on Learner Protection Plans by 1 August 2026 – and a vague promise to ensure “accessible, effective routes to seek redress for any issue which might arise”.

There is one intriguing orphaned line on the Medr page for students that says it will require [by implication all] providers to prepare a Learner Protection Plan setting out how they will protect learners’ interests in the event of course disruption or closure.

The implication that it will be a universal requirement, and the addition of disruption both sound promising – but they could also be typos.

Either way, it would be wise for Wales to not make the same mistakes as England while it has the chance. If Medr, OfS and whatever the name will be for the new body in Scotland need consumer law enforcement powers, the Westminster government should crack on.

Medr should attempt to differentiate between collective learner engagement and individual rights and redress – taking steps to satisfy itself that students know their rights and can get access to support if they need help enforcing them.

It, with its ministers, should think very carefully about the huge gap in regulation represented by nobody meaningfully enforcing the Equality Act 2010 in HE with particular reference to disabled students and reasonable adjustments.

It might usefully just require Welsh universities to all have the same student consumer contract. Why are students all on the same terms for their loan, but different terms for their course? It should also set out its position on consumer protection law enforcement where students aren’t consumers – on medical or nursing courses, for example.

And given the precarious nature of provider finances in Wales, it should accelerate and broaden its plans for Learner Protection now – making clear to providers what they can and can’t do without individual consent from students in contract as they seek to make savings.

Without the above, promises to put “learners at the heart” will be as hollow as they’ve often felt in England.