Complaints Procedure

This document has not yet been reviewed by a solicitor and is a working draft: London Maths & Science College should have it checked by a qualified adviser before the site goes live.

Use this procedure for anything about the college itself: the quality of teaching, the way a class is run, marking and feedback on internal work, an administrative error, a fee or refund calculation you disagree with, the conduct of a member of staff, how an access arrangement application was handled, an accessibility barrier we have failed to fix, or how we have handled your personal data.

Anyone affected can use it. That includes students, applicants, parents and guardians paying fees, and private candidates who sit examinations with us without studying here.

There is no charge. There is no form, and using it costs you nothing. Complaining will not affect your teaching, your reference, your predicted grade or your examination entry, and any suggestion that it might is itself something to complain about.

A complaint is looked at by somebody who was not the subject of it. That is the whole of the principle, and it is the part most procedures quietly skip.

We will tell you who is investigating and give you a chance to explain your side in writing or in a conversation, whichever you prefer. Where a complaint is about a member of staff, that person is told what has been said and given the same chance to respond, because a fair process runs in both directions.

We look at records, correspondence, attendance, marked work, payment history, entry records, as well as accounts from the people involved. The written outcome tells you what we found, what we did not accept and why, and what we are going to do about it. If we got something wrong, we say so and put it right; that may mean replacement teaching, additional marking, a fee reduction, a refund, a correction to a record, or a change to how we do something.

We keep a record of complaints and outcomes, held under our privacy notice. We use it to spot patterns, which is the only way a complaint from one student improves anything for the next one.

Malpractice means conduct that threatens the integrity of an examination, a candidate taking a prohibited item into the room, submitting work that is not their own, or a member of centre staff breaching security, coaching improperly, or certifying work they know to be unauthenticated. Maladministration means getting the administration wrong: entries made incorrectly, papers stored improperly, arrangements not put in place as approved.

Both are reported and investigated under the JCQ document Suspected Malpractice: Policies and Procedures, which applies identically at every centre and to every awarding body. Reports are made on JCQ’s standard forms, JCQ M1 for suspected candidate malpractice and the M2 and M3 forms for suspected malpractice involving centre staff, and go to the awarding body, which decides how the investigation proceeds and what penalty, if any, applies. Penalties for candidates run from loss of marks in a component to disqualification from every subject in the series.

If you suspect malpractice by a candidate, by a member of our staff, or by the centre itself, tell us and we will report it. If you would rather not tell us, which is a legitimate position if your concern is about the centre, you can report it directly to the awarding body, to JCQ, or to Ofqual, all of which accept reports from candidates, parents and members of the public.

Reporting in good faith is protected. A disclosure about wrongdoing of this kind may qualify for protection under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, and we will not treat a report made in good faith as a disciplinary matter or allow it to affect anyone’s teaching or entry. We will treat a deliberately false allegation seriously, which is a different thing.