OIA recruits students to help test its complaints service

Updated Nov 09, 2026

The Office of the Independent Adjudicator’s 4 November 2026 announcement invites students to join its Student Insight Panel. The panel will offer informal advice on developing, testing and improving the work of the student complaints organisation for England and Wales, including accessibility and communication.

What the panel will contribute

The OIA has appointed its first five members and is recruiting further current students and recent graduates. Members joining from January 2027 will serve initially for one year, attend two online meetings annually and respond to email referrals, with an annual payment of £450. Applications close at 10am on 30 November 2026. Students with a current OIA complaint cannot serve.

Test a route students need to use

For institutional Student Experience teams, our practical suggestion is to choose a service route and ask students to work through it. Start with a concrete task: finding where to raise a concern, identifying who will respond or understanding what happens after a submission.

Give participants the information a student would normally receive. Ask them to explain the next step in their own words and show where they would look for help. Record the points where the explanation leaves them unsure, then ask the service owner to review the wording or the route itself.

The student-partnership pathway offers ways to share the design of that activity. Agree the question students can influence and how their input will reach the person responsible for changing the service.

Connect comments with a decision

Open-text feedback can help identify the task to test. A comment about being passed between teams, for example, gives a service owner a specific handover to examine. Keep the comment’s context attached to the task and record how students describe the difficulty.

After revising an explanation or handover, invite students to try the route again. Ask whether they can identify the responsible team and understand the response they should expect. Keep the original issue, revised material and student check together.

The closing-the-loop pathway can help plan the return to participants. Our account of QAA’s discussion of participation costs also offers a useful prompt to consider the time and support an activity asks of students.

FAQ

What is the OIA panel’s role?

It provides informal student advice on improving the organisation’s service, including communication and accessibility.

What can an institution review locally?

Choose a particular task students need to complete, ask them to use the existing information and give the resulting questions to the team responsible for it.

How should a team report the result?

Explain the issue students identified, the decision reached and when participants can try the revised route. Give the follow-up a named owner.

References

Office of the Independent Adjudicator: Share your student experience: Join the OIA’s Student Insight Panel, 4 November 2026.