De Marco L¹, Major K¹

¹Commonwealth Ombudsman, Canberra, Australia

In November 2022, the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman published an issues paper titled ‘Improving fairness in written agreements between international students and Australian education providers’.

Based on its experience dealing with complaints from students about refunds, the Office observed that some written agreements may not be compliant with the Australian Consumer Law: specifically, provisions about Unfair Contract Terms.

This presentation will share case studies from the issues paper, types of terms to avoid in template agreements, and some principles to assist providers when drafting compliant and fair written agreements.

Biography:

Klara Major works in the Industry Investigations team at the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. The Commonwealth Ombudsman, who is also the Overseas Students Ombudsman, can consider complaints from international students about problems they are having with private education providers.

Aside from handling complaints, the Ombudsman’s Office also publishes information on trends and systemic issues that it observes in complaints and gives guidance to providers on best practice complaint handling.

Common types of complaint issues that International Students raise to the Ombudsman include the following:

• refunds of fees paid to education providers when students cancel enrolment or withdraw from study
• wishing to transfer to another education provider (during the restricted period)
• being reported for unsatisfactory course progress or attendance
• being unhappy with a grade received and feeling that the provider didn’t follow the correct process when reviewing the grade, and
• being unable to access a provider’s internal complaints and appeals process.