1. What is the purpose of this policy?
Open Universities Australia Pty Ltd (we, us, our) provides services that enable students to access online tertiary education. You may wish to raise a concern about the delivery of these services.
This Policy explains how we respond to and resolve complaints about non-academic matters. You can submit a complaint if you are a student who accesses unit/s of study through us, or if you seek to access unit/s of study through us (for the purposes of this Policy, we will collectively refer to both groups as “Students”).
2. What types of complaints are covered by this policy?
This Policy covers complaints that may relate to:
- The performance of our activities;
- The behaviour or actions of a staff member who is performing these activities;
- The behaviour or actions of another Student, which has impacted these activities;
- An administrative error that has required you to seek a re-credit of your HELP loan balance.
This Policy does not cover:
- Complaints about academic matters (which are outside our control and can only be dealt with through the academic grievance procedure of the university that teaches the relevant unit);
- Complaints about other reasons you need to seek a re-credit of your HELP loan balance (such as Special Circumstances);
- Complaints about our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information (refer to our Privacy Policy to find out what to do if you have a complaint about this); or
- Complaints from our staff.
3. The principles we follow when investigating a complaint
When you lodge a complaint, we aim to follow a resolution process that:
- Is procedurally fair;
- Is transparent and consistent;
- Allows for informal resolution;
- Is timely and responsive to your concerns;
- Respects the privacy, confidentiality, health, wellbeing and safety of all parties;
- Ensures that Students are not adversely affected when they make a complaint in good faith; and
- Provides accessible processes and procedures.
We will accept anonymous complaints, but if you ask to remain anonymous, it may affect our ability to investigate, resolve and/or respond to your complaint.
Where a complaint is, or becomes, the subject of a police investigation, we will suspend our investigation.
When to lodge your complaint
We expect you to lodge your complaint as soon as possible, and, no later than 12 months after the last incident leading to the complaint occurring.
If you lodge a complaint after 12 months, we will only investigate it if we are satisfied that:
- It relates to a serious matter; or
- Circumstances outside your control prevented you from lodging the complaint earlier; and
- It is still practicable for us to investigate the complaint.
4. How we handle the privacy and confidentiality of your complaint
Any information associated with a complaint:
- Will be treated with appropriate confidentiality;
- May be disclosed to meet the requirements of procedural fairness and for the purposes of investigating or otherwise dealing with the complaint;
- May be disclosed to an appropriate person or body if there is a serious risk of serious harm; and
- May be disclosed if required by law.
We may use information you share with us to support how we improve, report on and monitor our activities. We will aggregate and de-identify any data that relates to your complaint.
We will maintain confidential records in accordance with our Data Governance Policy.
5. What is our complaint resolution process?
Our complaint resolution process has four levels:
- Level 1: Informal complaint resolution
- Level 2: Formal complaint resolution
- Level 3: Internal review
- Level 4: External review
The procedures for each level of the complaint resolution process are outlined in our Complaint Resolution Procedures.
We may decline to consider a complaint that is vexatious, frivolous or not supported by sufficient information.
Withdrawing a complaint
If you make a complaint and then decide to withdraw it, you may withdraw it at any time by writing to tell us. In that case, we will close the complaint unless it:
- Raises significant systemic issues that should be addressed; or
- Is considered serious enough for an investigation to continue.
6. Changes to this Policy
We will review and update this Policy annually.