Student loses claim for ‘poor’ teaching of India subject at Oxford

LONDON : In a rare case of its kind, a student who sued Oxford University for failing to get high marks in his degree allegedly due to inadequate teaching of a topic related to Indian history had his claim for £1 million dismissed by the high court on Wednesday.

Faiz Siddiqui, who studied at Brasenose College, graduated in 2000 but claimed that he was not admitted to Harvard for higher studies due to his lower overall mark, and that he was so depressed by the result he could not perform well in a law career.

He raised the issue of the quality of teaching in the final year of his BA in modern history on the paper “India, 1916-1934: Indigenous Politics and Imperial Control”, which covered the influence of Mahatma Gandhi and civil disobedience campaigns and British responses to them.

In a 63-page ruling, Justice David Foskett said he was not convinced the teaching was "negligently inadequate". Oxford accepted there were fewer teaching staff in the Michaelmas (autumn) term in 1999 due to staff being granted leave of absence, but denied teaching was "inadequate".

The judge accepted that Siddiqui had suffered severe depression, but he felt this could not be attributed to his degree result. He found there were other reasons beyond his bouts of depression to explain his failure to hold down the various jobs he had.