Faiz Siddiqui v University of Oxford
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Kerr |
| Judgment Date | 05 December 2016 |
| Neutral Citation | [2016] EWHC 3150 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ14X03469 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 05 December 2016 |
[2016] EWHC 3150 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
The Honourable Mr Justice Kerr
Case No: HQ14X03469
Mr Roger Mallalieu ( Direct Access) for the Claimant
Mr Julian Milford (instructed by Bevan Brittan LLP) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 25 November 2016
Judgment Approved by the Court
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this judgment and that copies of this version may be treated as authentic.
The defendant university applies to strike out or for summary judgment on this claim by one of its former students. The claimant is a former history student at Brasenose College, Oxford. The defendants are, or the defendant is, collectively, the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford. I shall refer to the defendant as the University.
The claimant sat his final examinations in June 2000 and obtained an Upper Second Class Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in history. His claim against the University is for damages for negligent teaching leading, he alleges, to him failing to get a higher 2:1 or a first class degree which, he says, he would otherwise have achieved.
The claimant also sued Brasenose College. I shall refer to it as the College or Brasenose. Its full title is, I understand, the King's Hall and College of Brasenose in Oxford. The claim against the College has been discontinued on agreed terms.
The claimant alleges specific poor teaching of one part of the course, in large part due, he says, to unavailability of sufficient teaching staff at the time, due to sabbatical leave. He also alleges that the University inadequately handled certain medical information about the claimant in the possession of a Dr Ingram, of Brasenose, with the consequence that it was not passed on to the right people and acted upon.
The University has applied to strike out the claim and/or for summary judgment on the ground that it is hopelessly bad on the merits and also plainly time barred. The matter was argued before me on 25 November 2016. The claimant says the claim is fit for trial and not doomed to fail; that the points raised in this application, both on the merits and on limitation, should properly be for the trial judge; and that the case is not appropriate to be dealt with by a summary process.
An outline of the facts
I confine my account mainly to undisputed or indisputable facts from the documents. The claimant joined the College in October 1997 as an undergraduate student. He showed signs of distress in February 1999, which were noted by his tutor, Dr Martin Ingram of the College. According to Dr Ingram, this did not lead to any suggestion that he should seek any special treatment on medical grounds when it came to examinations, which were then some time away.
In Michaelmas term 1999, the claimant and others took the Indian Special Subject (ISS) as part of their history course. The ISS covers the influence of Ghandi and the civil disobedience campaigns in India and British imperial responses to these challenges during the early 20 th century. Its full title was: India, 1916–1934: Indigenous Politics and Imperial Control. The course was taught in a weekly documents class and supporting tutorials, supplemented by an eight week lecture course.
Another student, also taking the ISS, was a Ms Sasha Blackmore, then an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford. Her college tutor was Dr Martin Conway. According to Dr Conway's witness statement, during the 1999 Michaelmas or autumn term, Ms Blackmore raised with Dr Conway her frustrations about the course and in particular that she felt she had not received the quality of teaching she had expected. She felt classes and tutorials had not covered all the set texts and had not been sufficiently demanding. Dr Conway was an expert in the subject. He agreed to read and critique, but not mark, some of her analyses of "gobbets", i.e. primary source texts, when it came to revision for finals the following summer.
In May and June 2000, the claimant sat his final examinations, including two papers on the ISS course, of which one required him to write about gobbets. A medical certificate called "Form 1" dated 27 June 2000 appears to show that he sat examination papers on 30 May and 8 June 2000, both in the afternoon. The Form 1 stated that his medical condition will have affected his performance in "all" examinations, "but particularly" the two taken on 30 May and 8 June respectively.
It is common ground that the claimant was suffering from hay fever at the time, that the examiners were aware of this and that it was taken into account. A second form, "Form 2", appearing to emanate from a doctor, described his hay fever symptoms as severe: "runny blocked nose, can't breathe, nose bleeds, sinus congestion, headache, itchy sore red eyes running all the time, scratchy throat, itchy skin, poor sleep, poor concentration, irritability." The doctor went on to say he had tried "many treatments & consulted several times but is still suffering".
The claimant sat all the examinations including the two ISS papers. He was awarded an Upper Second Class BA Honours degree or, in more colloquial language, he a got a 2:1. His marks in individual examination papers ranged quite widely. In the two ISS papers, his marks were towards the bottom of that range, and in one he scored his lowest mark of all.
Ms Blackmore, who was awarded a First Class degree, wrote a letter dated 4 July 2000 complaining of the teaching on the ISS course. She copied it to two Balliol tutors, one being Dr Conway. She addressed it to the Co-ordinator of Undergraduate Studies, Dr John Robertson. It is not suggested that the claimant was aware of this letter at the time, although he was acquainted with Ms Blackmore and others taking the ISS option.
I will not set out the letter in detail. It complained about the quality of the classes and the tutorials. There is an issue between the parties as to whether what she was complaining about, or parts of it, were non-justiciable matters of academic judgment. At any trial, that would be an issue for the trial judge. Part of the complaint related to the low incidence of coverage of the gobbets. She expressed gratitude to her college tutor, saying she had found him more help than the classes.
As to the tutorials, she complained that only one tutor, Dr Washbrook, had to teach all 16 of the students. She complained of what she perceived as his disengagement and indifference. She had, she said, even "facilitated an informal India Special Subject discussion group" among the students, as a sort of auto-didactic measure to make up for what she perceived as the shortfall in the quality of the teaching.
On 19 July 2000, the claimant's college tutor, Dr Ingram wrote to inform him of his degree result and congratulated him, though noting that "surprisingly you underachieved significantly on the Special Subject". He confirmed that the medical evidence was considered but he did not think it had affected the overall classification. He described the result as "very respectable", and offered to help with writing references in future.
The University took Ms Blackmore's complaint seriously. Dr Robertson wrote a preliminary response letter dated 25 July 2000, saying he had forwarded the complaint onward for comment from others. He said that the University had known that due to sabbatical leave only one tutor, Dr Washbrook, had been available to give the tutorials. They had decided, however, to "cap" the course at 16 students rather than reduce it to eight, with Dr Washbrook's "blessing". This meant that Dr Washbrook was "teaching well over his tutorial stint". Retaining the cap at 16 students "may have resulted …. in undergraduates receiving less tutorial attention that is possible in most Special Subjects".
Dr Washbrook, of the Centre for Indian Studies at St Anthony's College, Oxford, responded, not to Ms Blackmore but to the Chair of the Modern History Faculty, Dr Felicity Heal. He wrote at length. In part, he commented on the nature of the ISS course and teaching methods. He described as a "considerable understatement" the proposition that he had been teaching "over my stint". Referring to 17 students rather than 16, he said he had had to do everything and his workload was " intolerable" [bold italics in the original].
The rest of the letter comprised expressions of regret at Ms Blackmore's dissatisfaction mixed with an attempt to rebut her criticisms and to defend the standard of his teaching. He ended with a denial that he willingly put himself forward for such a heavy teaching load and said he had "agreed to teach the whole group under pressure from Teaching Committee to keep the Special Subject going in spite of the grossly inadequate teaching provision made by the Faculty". He ended by saying this:
If the Faculty is unable to provide adequate means to teach its own syllabus, then as far as I am concerned, the syllabus cannot be taught – and the Teaching Quality Assessors can make of that what they may.
Next to respond to Ms Blackmore's complaint was Professor Judith Brown of Balliol College. She is a renowned expert on the history of India under British rule. She wrote on 27 September 2000 to Dr Heal, saying she had seen Dr Washbrook's response and thought it "accurate and very fair". She questioned the wisdom of the decision to set the cap at 16 students rather than fewer, and placed responsibility on the Faculty for tutorial provision "though legally it may not be".
Professor Brown went on to write that she had been asked by Ms Blackmore to mark a gobbets paper at the start of Trinity term...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Sebastian Cody v Remus White Ltd
...duty of care to exercise due care and skill with regard to their pupils (page 667 at C). 143 In Faiz Siddiqui v University of Oxford [2016] EWHC 3150 (QB) Mr Justice Kerr (paragraphs 41 to 46) identified three categories of negligent educational provision: i) first, the exercise of academi......
-
Kim Medford v Barbados Community College
...Hassall LLP supra, @ para 18 41 [2019] EWHC 1040 42 Clutterbuck v Brook Martin, supra @ para 62–65; para 77 43 Paras 37–38 supra. 44 [2016] EWHC 3150 (QB) 45 Siddiqui v Chancellors, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford [2018] EWHC 184 (QB) ...
-
Kim Medford v Linda Prosper
...to the 1 st and 2 nd Defendants to be assessed if not agreed. SHONA O. GRIFFITH Judge of the High Court 1 [1988] 1 All ER 15 2 [2016] EWHC 3150 (QB) 3 Section 14(1) Limitation Act, 1980 4 [2006] EWHC 1009 5 [2006] EWHC 3239 ...
-
Green light given for a disgruntled student's claim against the University of Oxford to go to trial
...the recent, highly publicised, case of Faiz Siddiqui v. University of Oxford [2016] EWHC 3150 (QB), the High Court considered whether a former university student's claim for negligent teaching should be struck out or summary judgment entered on the ground that it was hopelessly bad on the m......