Category: mental health

  • Parliament has debated a statutory duty of care again

    Parliament has debated a statutory duty of care again

    There has been a new parliamentary debate on a statutory duty of care for universities, which returned to Westminster Hall following a similar debate in 2023.

    I had trouble finding some of the background material – it’s perhaps unfortunate that the Nottingham Trent webpage that was hosting all of the outputs and guidance notionally attached to the Higher Education Student Support Champion and the Department for Education’s Higher education mental health implementation taskforce now redirects to a picture and bio of new Trent VC Dave Petley.

    It’s not at all clear why things like the guidance on Compassionate Communications or the National review of higher education student suicide deaths are, as a result, scattered across the internet, but there is almost certainly a metaphor in there somewhere.

    Uncertainty

    Opening the debate, Labour’s James Naish (Rushcliffe) argued that the current legal framework leaves “too much uncertainty for students and institutions alike”, noting a rise in students disclosing mental health conditions and confusion over what students can and can’t expect.

    The law develops only after harm has occurred through costly and traumatic litigation brought by those least able to bear that burden.

    Naish noted that a 2023 survey by the suicide prevention charity CALM found just 12 per cent of students believe their university handles mental health well, and referenced a British Medical Association survey of medical students published shortly before Christmas that called for a statutory duty, specifically citing concerns about sexism and sexual violence towards medical students.

    Contributors shared harrowing constituency cases throughout the debate. Labour’s Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) recounted the death of Mared Foulkes, a pharmacy student who died by suicide after receiving incorrect exam results from Cardiff University. Medi described the current situation as:

    A postcode lottery in terms of quality and accessibility of mental health care.

    Labour’s Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) described how Oskar, a student at Sheffield Hallam living with a brain injury, attempted suicide but his parents were never informed despite giving explicit consent for contact. Chadwick said the university later argued that this consent applied only to physical injuries, not to an attempt to take his own life. He proposed a practical safeguard:

    Every student to nominate a trusted point of contact when they enrol, to be used in the event of a serious concern.”

    Chadwick also highlighted data from the government’s National Review of higher education student suicide deaths, noting that reports were submitted for only 62 per cent of serious incidents, families were not involved in three quarters of investigations, and in 71 per cent of reports it was unclear whether there had been senior sign-off.

    The DUP’s Jim Shannon (Strangford) highlighted that around 30 per cent of Northern Ireland students study on the UK mainland, making the issue directly pertinent to families in his constituency. He cited statistics on the prevalence of anxiety and mental health issues among young people in Northern Ireland and stressed:

    Independence is not the same as isolation.

    He called for discussions between the minister and the devolved administrations to work collectively across the United Kingdom.

    Labour’s Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West), a former personal injury solicitor, provided legal analysis, describing it as “quite shocking” that common law does not impose a duty of care on universities when such duties exist:

    In prisons, hospitals, primary, secondary schools and colleges of further education… for doctor to patient, solicitor to client, manufacturer to consumer, and one road user to another.

    She walked through the Abrahart v University of Bristol case in detail, and noted that had a duty of care existed:

    There would have been a breach of that duty, and the university would consequently have been negligent.

    A statutory duty, she argued, would “define expectations, embed accountability and promote prevention” while bringing UK law into line with the United States and Australia. She also pushed back on the idea that relying on the Equality Act is sufficient, noting that while some cases involve a history of engagement and diagnosis:

    In many other cases, it could be something that the student suddenly finds himself in this situation.

    Students without a formal disability diagnosis would fall through the gaps.

    Labour’s Rachel Maskell (York Central) broadened the debate to include the intersection of pressures students face, and emphasised that students who struggle academically must always have “a second chance”.

    Labour’s Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) raised implementation questions, noting that any statutory duty would need clarity on what it means in a higher education context and must intersect with existing safeguarding responsibilities, health and safety law and equality legislation. He also asked:

    Who would monitor and regulate compliance? Would it fall under Ofsted? Would it fall under the Office for Students, the DfE, or a new regulatory body?

    Labour’s Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) highlighted the particular vulnerability of care-experienced and estranged students, citing a Unite Foundation report that “well over a quarter” face financial concerns that “directly damage their mental health”. She noted the scale of the increase in students disclosing mental health conditions since 2011, and argued that a statutory duty need not mean in loco parentis monitoring:

    A professional standard of care providing the same level of protection that we would expect from an employer or a healthcare provider.”

    A statutory duty would also provide clarity on data sharing to empower pastoral teams to involve emergency contacts without fearing that they are breaching GDPR – an issue raised repeatedly throughout the debate as universities have used data protection as a reason not to contact families. But Foy cautioned that concerns raised by the University and College Union must be addressed:

    Simply imposing a duty of care on universities won’t work if already overstretched staff and underfunded pastoral teams are simply expected to pick up the pieces.”

    Labour’s Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) raised the question of whether a statutory duty of care is the mechanism needed to bring smaller and less prominent higher education providers on board, or whether there might be another way to ensure consistency across the sector.

    The Liberal Democrat spokesperson argued that the voluntary university mental health charter – to which just over 100 of 165 universities have signed up – must become more than an aspiration:

    A voluntary aspiration must evolve to a rigorous accountability mechanism… with clear standards, regular independent assessment and consequences for non-compliance.

    Conservative shadow spokesperson Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) acknowledged that while their party’s position on a statutory duty is not yet fully established, “we certainly need to do a lot better than we’re doing right now.” He also bolted on a bunch of stuff about freedom of speech.

    The response

    Responding for the government, Skills Minister Josh McAlister began by acknowledging “the profound pain” felt by families who have lost loved ones and paying tribute to the Abraharts’ “tireless work” and the families from the LEARN Network “who continue to work alongside us to drive change.” He was unequivocal that change was needed:

    This government believes that change in this regard is needed.

    He then outlined recent government actions, including publication of the National Review of higher education student suicides, the extension of the Higher Education Mental Health Implementation Taskforce with updated terms of reference published in December 2025, and the appointment of Steve West to replace Edward Peck Higher Education Student Support Champion. He emphasised that the taskforce’s priorities include:

    Exploring the most effective mechanisms for holding the sector to account.

    On NHS capacity, McAlister noted the government is “recruiting eight and a half thousand additional NHS mental health staff by the end of this Parliament” and said the taskforce would shortly publish a report showcasing five successful higher education and NHS partnerships. He urged universities not already in such partnerships:

    …to study these models and explore how they can forge an approach that works for their local context.

    Perhaps inevitably, McAlister stopped short of committing to a statutory duty of care. He repeated the argument that universities already have a general duty of care under common law to deliver educational and pastoral services “to the standard of an ordinarily competent institution” and are expected to act reasonably. He also pointed to existing protections under the Equality Act 2010, which requires reasonable adjustments for disabled students including those with mental health conditions, and said:

    Where a severe or urgent condition is apparent, reasonable adjustments should be made without waiting for a formal diagnosis or medical evidence.

    On why the government was not introducing a statutory duty, McAlister raised concerns about unintended consequences:

    It is not just a question of drafting. It would require defining a minimum legal standard for universities, which risks becoming a ceiling rather than a floor.

    …and warned that a statutory duty:

    …could drive providers towards defensive compliance and litigation instead of focusing on what really matters, spotting problems early, making timely adjustments and learning from serious incidents.

    He also noted that:

    Almost all students are adults. Introducing a special statutory duty for them could be disproportionate when the evidence shows that students in higher education have a lower suicide rate than others in the same age in the general population.

    McAlister was quick to add this was “not in any way to minimise the problem at universities” but to “highlight the need for a proportionate response that strikes the right balance.”

    His conclusion offered continued engagement but no commitment to legislate:

    We will continue to monitor the evidence, listen deeply to bereaved families and hold providers to account. But right now, the fastest and most effective route to support safer campuses is for universities to embed the recommendations from the National Review and best practice identified through the task force’s outputs.

    Round in circles

    McAlister’s rejection of a statutory duty rested on three key arguments – that adequate legal protections already exist, that a statutory duty risks becoming “a ceiling rather than a floor,” and that students have a lower suicide rate than their peers in the general population. But is he right?

    McAlister’s assertion that universities already have a general duty of care under common law to deliver services “to the standard of an ordinarily competent institution” has been repeated by successive ministers since 2023, but its legal basis is questionable.

    The source has been traced to an AMOSSHE policy breakfast blog published in 2015 – since deleted from its original website. When tested in court in Abrahart v University of Bristol, the judge found no relevant common law duty existed.

    In Feder and McCamish v The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, the court found a limited duty only because the institution failed to follow its own voluntary procedures – it explicitly did not recognise any general duty to protect student welfare.

    Freedom of Information requests seeking the legal authority for the government’s position have been refused under legal professional privilege. The government has never identified a court, judge, or case supporting its assertion. As one legal analysis noted, the government’s response “has no legal weight” – a view shared by the defendant’s own barrister in the Royal Welsh case.

    McAlister warned that a statutory duty would drive “defensive compliance and litigation” rather than genuine care. But the behaviours critics fear – defensive reliance on process, fragmentation of responsibility, procedural rigidity, retrospective rather than proactive responses – are arguably already characteristic of the current voluntary system.

    Universities operate through dense policy layers designed to manage liability rather than responsibility. The absence of clear accountability has not produced proactive care – it has produced risk management in which no one is clearly responsible when foreseeable harm occurs.

    Bob Abrahart’s analogy with seatbelt legislation is fascinating – before the law changed, critics warned compulsory seatbelts would encourage passive compliance rather than active judgment. What actually happened was that the law reset baseline expectations, and culture followed. A statutory duty would not prevent universities exceeding minimum standards – it would ensure none falls below them.

    You could make a raft of similar arguments, by the way, about harassment and sexual misconduct. But just yesterday in the House of Lords skills minister Jacqui Smith pointed to “unacceptable levels of sexual harassment and abuse of girls within our schools and universities,” and pointed to the recently introduced Office for Students regulatory requirements on harassment and sexual misconduct as steps towards creating safer campus environments and improving institutional accountability.

    Why are regulatory requirements the answer on that issue, but a danger on this?

    McAlister also noted that students have a lower suicide rate than others of the same age, suggesting a statutory duty would be “disproportionate.” But for many, the framing is misleading.

    University students are not representative of their age group – they have passed academic and financial thresholds to reach higher education, and many with acute mental health challenges never arrive or leave when unwell. A lower rate among a pre-selected, relatively advantaged population is expected – that it is not dramatically lower should concern, not reassure.

    Universities are supposed to be semi-protected environments with pastoral care, support services, and trained staff. If the benchmark is whether students are safer inside higher education than outside it, the answer is far from clear. The reality of 160 deaths per year – more than three every week – hardly supports complacency.

    Aggregate rates also conceal inequalities – male students die at more than twice the rate of female students, first-year undergraduates face significantly higher risk, and part-time students have higher rates than full-time peers.

    Wait and see

    The most prominent commitment Halfon made – that all universities would sign up to the mental health charter by September 2024 – was not achieved. Membership increased to 113 universities, covering approximately 90 per cent of students, but fell short of universal coverage.

    More significantly, sign-up does not equal meaningful engagement – as of May 2025, only 17 institutions had actually been awarded charter status, and most of those achieved only “award with conditions.” The gap between signing up and embedding its principles illustrates a recurring pattern – outputs were produced, but outcomes remain elusive.

    The National review of higher education student suicides was delivered – conducted by NCISH and published in May 2025. There is as yet no sign that engagement with its recommendations for universities will be even monitored, let alone action taken.

    The Compassionate Communication Statement that Halfon promised was published and shared with the sector by December 2024, but adoption remains voluntary. There is no requirement for universities to follow it, and no sign even of monitoring that it’s been considered let alone implemented.

    Plenty of SUs I’ve spoken to tell me that a) it’s never been considered formally inside their committee structures, and even where it has b) there’s been little on monitoring adoption across a university’s diverse departments. There has also c) been a sense in some universities that it doesn’t apply in some scenarios – like when a student is accused of an assessment offence, or being chased for tuition fee payments.

    A Competency framework for non-specialist staff was published in February 2025, but it too is merely “advisory” – taskforce members raised concerns that because training is not mandatory, many staff groups may simply “opt out.”

    Other commitments have stalled or failed entirely. Information sharing between schools and universities to identify at-risk students before arrival remains, in the taskforce’s own words, “a complex and time-consuming task.” UCAS has expressed “limited appetite” for changes to the reference process, and proposed “wellbeing passports” face significant cost and viability barriers.

    Student analytics and early warning systems have not been rolled out – taskforce minutes show “major obstacles remain” and many providers feel they are “too far away” from implementation.

    Guidance on restricting access to means of suicide was published in September 2024, but the national review found this was “rarely addressed” in university incident reports, with only one out of eight relevant reports recommending any action.

    There’s also lots in the minutes on whether, how, if and so on there should be engagement with or compliance from FE providers, small and specialist, franchised and so on. Years abroad, placements and so on, not to much.

    Crucially, the regulatory threat that underpinned Halfon’s approach has not materialised. He warned that if the sector response was unsatisfactory, he would ask the Office for Students to introduce a new registration condition on mental health. How would DfE even know?

    What could be done?

    As to how any duty might actually work, it’s not as if there aren’t some interesting examples that deserve further interrogation.

    Sweden treats students as equivalent to employees for the purposes of workplace safety law. The Work Environment Act 1977 explicitly extends its protections to “persons undergoing education or training,” so university students are covered by the same statutory framework that protects workers.

    The Higher Education Ordinance then reinforces this by requiring institutions to provide students with access to healthcare – “particularly preventive healthcare that aims to support students’ physical and mental health” – and a “good environment in which to study.”

    What makes the Swedish system particularly robust is its enforcement through student representation. Student unions appoint studerandeskyddsombud (student safety representatives) who have formal statutory rights to participate in work environment activities.

    These reps sit on safety committees alongside staff, participate in inspections of teaching premises, and can raise concerns about both physical and psychosocial study environments directly with university leadership. Universities have to provide training on work environment legislation, and the Swedish Work Environment Authority supervises compliance and can intervene against institutions.

    Responsibility for the work environment lies with the institution and ultimately with the management – but students have formal standing to identify problems and demand action.

    Meanwhile Australia embeds student wellbeing within a regulatory framework with real consequences. Domain 2 of the Higher Education Standards Framework includes a dedicated section on “Wellbeing and Safety,” requiring providers to promote a safe environment, provide timely advice on support services, and ensure services reflect student needs including mental health and wellbeing.

    The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) has statutory powers to register providers, assess compliance, and take enforcement action. All providers must be registered, and registration must be renewed at least every seven years. Meeting wellbeing and safety standards is not optional – it is a condition of being permitted to operate.

    Both models offer lessons. Sweden demonstrates that students can be brought within existing workplace safety legislation without creating unworkable burdens – the framework already exists for employees, and extending it to students is a matter of legal definition. Australia demonstrates that wellbeing requirements can be embedded in registration conditions enforced by an education regulator with powers to sanction non-compliance.

    England already has the Office for Students as a sector regulator with power to impose registration conditions. The question ministers have repeatedly declined to answer is why wellbeing and safety in the learning environment should not be among them.

    Both Sweden and Australia show this is not novel or untested – it is just how other comparable jurisdictions protect their students. Surely a Tertiary Professional Standard can’t be beyond the sector to meet?

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  • Universities need standards, not role models

    Universities need standards, not role models

    The debate about duty of care in higher education has been obscured by the repeated collapse of distinct legal questions into a single, unresolved argument.

    In particular, discussion of whether a duty of care exists is routinely conflated with questions about what responsibility would require in practice.

    That confusion has prevented sustained analysis of the standards by which conduct should be judged, which is where responsibility acquires real content.

    To address that problem, this article deliberately limits the scope of its analysis. It does not engage with the minimal, background obligation that applies to everyone not to cause foreseeable and substantial harm to others.

    That obligation is universal and requires very little: it is ordinarily satisfied by avoiding obvious risks in everyday activity, and it doerobert as not involve the design of systems, the monitoring of risk, or the anticipation of harm beyond what is immediately apparent.

    Nor does this article seek to resolve the threshold question of whether, and in what precise circumstances, an overarching institutional duty arises in higher education. That question turns on context and relationship and can be answered in different ways as a matter of law.

    This limitation is adopted for a reason. Disputes about the existence or outer boundaries of duty tend to obscure the more significant and unresolved issue of how responsibility should be exercised in practice.

    The analysis proceeds on the assumption that, as in other recognised institutional and professional contexts, a relationship-based duty may arise where organisations undertake defined functions and create foreseeable risks through their systems and decision-making.

    On that assumption, the central question is not whether duty exists, but how it should be discharged. The focus is accordingly on the standards by which responsibility should be assessed in a modern university, rather than on analogies or models of conduct borrowed from different fields.

    Duty establishes responsibility; standards give it content

    In law, a duty and the standard by which conduct is assessed perform different functions. The duty establishes that responsibility arises at all. It is a gateway concept, triggered where there is a sufficient relationship and a risk of foreseeable harm.

    Once a duty exists, it doesn’t prescribe outcomes or require the provision of any particular form of “care” in the everyday sense of that word. Rather, it establishes that those with responsibility must avoid carelessness in their actions or inaction, including in how systems are designed and how decisions are taken where foreseeable harm may arise.

    What counts as reasonable, and therefore what amounts to carelessness, is not determined by the existence of the duty itself, but by what is reasonably required in the circumstances, having regard to the role performed, the functions undertaken, and the context in which decisions are made.

    The practical consequences of this distinction are straightforward but often overlooked. Responsibility does not take a single, uniform form. What it requires depends on the nature of the activity undertaken, the role being performed, and the degree of reliance and risk created in the circumstances. The same underlying obligation not to act carelessly will therefore be expressed very differently in different settings.

    Crucially, it also requires that foreseeable risks are addressed rather than deferred – responsibility is not discharged by ignoring warning signs, postponing decisions, or allowing procedural drift to substitute for timely action where intervention is reasonably required.

    The distinction is often easiest to see through the lens of professional systems. A stranger has no obligation to warn you of an approaching storm. An airline, by contrast, has invited you into its system and possesses the radar to see the danger. It can’t stop the storm, and it’s not your parent – but it does have a responsibility arising from how it manages risk.

    Borrowed standards obscure, rather than clarify, responsibility

    Discussions of responsibility in higher education are frequently derailed by the use of inappropriate comparisons.

    When questions are raised about what universities should reasonably be expected to do, the response is often to reach for an existing and familiar model from elsewhere – parenting, custody, clinical practice, or institutional supervision. These comparisons are then used to argue that universities either cannot, or should not, be held responsible in similar ways.

    This mode of argument rests on a basic mistake. It assumes that responsibility must always be understood by analogy to some other established setting, and that the only question is which existing model should be imported (never mind that none of them quite fit). The result is a debate conducted by comparison rather than analysis, in which standards developed for very different purposes are treated as benchmarks against which responsibility in higher education is judged.

    The problem is not that these other standards exist. It is that they are being used in the wrong way.

    One obligation, assessed differently across contexts

    Across the law, there is not a proliferation of different duties corresponding to different institutions. In each case there is an underlying obligation not to act carelessly where responsibility arises. What varies is how that obligation is assessed in different contexts. The law doesn’t ask whether an institution resembles a parent, a prison, or a hospital. It asks what avoiding careless conduct reasonably requires, given the role performed, the functions undertaken, and the risks created.

    Standards developed in other settings reflect those settings. Parental and apprenticeship standards arose where there was dependency and close supervision. Custodial standards reflect confinement and control. Clinical standards reflect specialist expertise, regulation, and professional judgement. Each provides a way of judging conduct in its own context. None is a universal template, and none can be transplanted wholesale into a different institutional environment without distortion.

    Using these standards as analogies for higher education therefore tells us very little about what universities should reasonably be expected to do. At best, such comparisons show what higher education is not. They don’t tell us what it is.

    In loco parentis explains the past – it does not define the present

    The continued invocation of in loco parentis illustrates this problem clearly. Parents owe a duty to their children, but they are judged according to a parental standard shaped by dependency, authority, and control. In loco parentis did not create a special or additional duty. It applied that parental standard to educational institutions at a time when students were young, dependent, and subject to close supervision.

    The difficulty today is not that universities are being asked to revive this model. It is that in loco parentis is still treated as a reference point, either to be defended or rejected, rather than as a historical example of how responsibility was once assessed in very different circumstances. Once that is recognised, arguments about universities “becoming parents” lose their relevance. The parental standard is neither applicable nor required.

    Control calibrates responsibility – it does not create it

    Control is often introduced at this point as a decisive factor. Universities, it is argued, do not exercise the level of control found in prisons, hospitals, or schools, and therefore should not be subject to responsibility of any comparable kind. This argument again mistakes comparison for analysis.

    Control doesn’t determine whether responsibility arises. It influences what avoiding careless conduct reasonably requires. Where control is extensive, expectations are correspondingly more intrusive. Where control is partial or situational, expectations are more limited. Where control is absent, responsibility may still arise, but its practical demands will be constrained. This is how responsibility already operates across institutional contexts, including prisons, hospitals, and schools.

    Control, in this sense, isn’t all-or-nothing. A university doesn’t control where a student chooses to walk late at night, but it does control the lighting on its own campus paths. Responsibility attaches to what falls within that sphere of influence, and the standard is calibrated accordingly.

    The same reasoning applies to higher education providers. The question is not whether they resemble other institutions, but how responsibility should be assessed having regard to what they actually do, how they are organised, and the risks their systems and decisions create.

    In professional systems, responsibility includes designing processes that can respond when risk escalates beyond routine conditions. Where systems lack clear escalation pathways, or where exceptional circumstances cannot override ordinary procedure, responsibility may fail not through indifference, but through inertia. Standards of care are tested not only by what institutions do in normal conditions, but by whether their systems enable timely and proportionate action when those conditions no longer apply.

    Seen in this light, comparisons with parents, prisons, or hospitals do not advance the debate. They obscure it. Higher education doesn’t need to borrow someone else’s standard in order to avoid responsibility, nor to justify it. What is required is a clear articulation of the standard that fits higher education as it exists now, rather than as it once did or as something else entirely.

    A professional standard in practice

    Modern universities are professional institutions operating through differentiated roles, delegated expertise, and organisational systems. Avoiding carelessness in this context doesn’t require staff to act beyond their competence. Academic staff are not clinicians, and non-academic staff are not responsible for making safeguarding judgements beyond their role.

    Clarity of role is not a threat to academic freedom but a condition of it. By defining where responsibility properly sits, academic staff are protected from being pressed into quasi-clinical or pastoral roles for which they are neither trained nor authorised, allowing them to focus on teaching and scholarship while institutional systems manage risk. Academic freedom is therefore not incompatible with responsibility – it depends on responsibility being allocated clearly and appropriately.

    What avoiding careless conduct does require is that roles are clearly defined, that concerns are recognised and escalated appropriately, and that institutional systems are designed to manage foreseeable risk without leaving responsibility to chance. Harm frequently arises not from dramatic acts, but from omissions – fragmented information, unclear responsibility, or decisions taken without regard to known risk. These are questions of institutional competence rather than individual moral failing.

    The difference between a parental approach and a professional one can be illustrated simply. Under a parental standard, a student’s unexplained absence might prompt direct personal intervention – phone calls, door-knocking, or demands for explanation. Under a tertiary professional standard, responsibility is exercised differently.

    The focus is not on intrusion, but on systems – whether attendance data, engagement with digital resources, or other indicators trigger an appropriate institutional response in line with defined roles and protocols. The question is not why the student has disengaged, but whether the institution’s systems are functioning competently to recognise and respond to foreseeable risk.

    Naming the Tertiary Professional Standard

    The standard by which responsibility in higher education should be assessed can be described as the Tertiary Professional Standard. This term identifies the particular way in which responsibility is judged in the higher education context, reflecting its professional, role-sensitive, and institutional character.

    It is neither parental, custodial, nor clinical. It aligns responsibility with competence and control, reflects the realities of adult education, and recognises that universities act through systems as well as individuals. The Tertiary Professional Standard protects students without infantilising them, and it protects staff by defining the limits of what can reasonably be expected.

    It replaces confusion with clarity. Higher education doesn’t need to revive outdated models or deny responsibility altogether. It needs to articulate, clearly and honestly, the standard by which responsibility is already exercised. That is the conversation now worth having.

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  • Reimagining Education through Ritual and Beauty – Faculty Focus

    Reimagining Education through Ritual and Beauty – Faculty Focus

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  • Reimagining Education through Ritual and Beauty – Faculty Focus

    Reimagining Education through Ritual and Beauty – Faculty Focus

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  • A Place Where Kids With the Toughest Behaviors Are Welcome and Can Heal – The 74

    A Place Where Kids With the Toughest Behaviors Are Welcome and Can Heal – The 74


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    Ann’s three young boys had been through a lot already. Her marriage to their father was marked by violence, and a divorce was followed by multiple violations of a protective order, she said. While their father sat in prison in North Dakota, she moved the family to the Twin Cities.

    But while the move gave them distance, it didn’t solve their problems, said Ann, who asked to be identified by her middle name to protect her children’s privacy. Her sons, especially the two youngest, suffered mental health issues including PTSD, ADHD and anxiety. Her middle son was diagnosed with disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, characterized by angry and sometimes violent outbursts.

    “I had 13 police calls within a nine-month period to my house,” Ann said. When a police officer handed her a domestic violence information card, she knew things had to change.

    Ann’s middle son had been enrolled in public school in a suburb of St. Paul, but after being removed from his mainstream classroom due to his behaviors, he wasn’t receiving the support he needed academically or emotionally.

    A social worker told her about Catholic Charities Children’s Day Treatment, located in Minneapolis Public Schools’ Wilder Complex and offering intensive supports to children in grades K-8 struggling with mental illness. Despite her nerves, Ann scheduled a visit. In one of her first interactions, an intake person said, “‘Because you’re here looking for help, you’re more advanced than most adults,’” Ann recalled. “I knew at that moment we were in the right place.”

    A trauma-informed approach for kids

    Jessica Dreischmeier, Catholic Charities Children’s Day Treatment Program director, said that her program is a good match for children like Ann’s sons. Staff not only understand the impact that early childhood trauma can have on mental health, but the program’s trauma-informed approach helps them make progress with kids deemed unfixable by other schools.

    “I would say a majority of the youth that come here for treatment have experienced some type of trauma,” Dreischmeier said. “We know that those symptoms can manifest themselves in a number of ways, including depression, aggression, anxiety, ADHD — and we have deep experience working with those kinds of kids.”

    With the right approach, she said, most kids can recover from mental illness.

    “One day might be hard, but over time we get there with pretty much everybody — which is awesome.”

    A long and loyal legacy

    Catholic Charities Children’s Day Treatment was founded in 1968 as an extension of St. Joseph’s Home for Children, founded in 1869 as a residential shelter for orphans. The day treatment program was created to provide an alternative option for children at St. Joseph’s who needed extra mental health support.

    St. Joseph’s Home closed in 2020, but the day treatment program continued. Enrollment is capped at 40 students who work with 17 full-time staff members. Students come from around the metro area but enroll in Minneapolis Public Schools through a partnership with the district. Mental health services are billed through health insurance.

    Many staff members have worked at the center for decades. Karen Johnson, a mental health practitioner who has been employed by the program for 24 years, said she feels a deep connection to the children in her care.

    “I should have retired five years ago,” Johnson said. “Each time I have that thought, another kid comes through the door, and  I’m like, ‘Now I have to stay until they finish the program.’ Then another kid comes.”

    A focus on parent connection and long-term success for kids

    According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, there are 37 licensed mental health day treatment programs for children in the state. Still, Dreischmeier said that Catholic Charities’ program remains in high demand.

    “The need for mental health services for youth and children in Minnesota has been going up for a while,” she said, “but especially after Covid, it’s particularly evident.”

    A typical day for students includes two three-hour blocks – one for academics and the other for mental health therapy and treatment.

    Mental health support is delivered in individual and group settings with a focus on parent and guardian involvement, Dreischmeier said. Families are taught how to build strong connections with their child and to reinforce strategies they’re practicing at school.

    The kids work on setting goals for their life beyond the program. While students’ individual goals look different, the overall aim is a return to home life and a less restrictive school setting. “We’re hoping our intervention helps kids stay in their home and with their family and not have an out-of-home placement,” Dreischmeier said.

    ‘We’re not going to leave anybody behind.’

    For parents like Ann, the transition to day treatment often comes amid deep distrust of past educational settings. Families arrive feeling guarded, Dreischmeier said. They wonder: “‘Are you going to perceive my child as a problem?’ ‘Will you only see them for the behaviors they are having when they are having a hard time, or will you see my whole child?’”

    The kids often wonder the same thing, Johnson said. “A lot of these kids come here with no hope. They think, ‘People say I’m bad so I’m never going to be nothing.’ I try to change that narrative.”

    Dreischmeier said that her staff remains undaunted even by the students’ most challenging behaviors.

    “If something is hard, we’re going to all come together and work on it and talk about it,” she said. We’re going to move forward all together. We’re not going to leave anybody behind.”

    Academically, the aim is not just to keep students on track, but to move them ahead. In traditional school settings with larger class sizes and fewer supports, children with serious mental health issues are often separated from their peers and fall behind.

    Dreischmeier said things are run differently at Children’s Day Treatment, where the ratio of adults to students is much higher – often three adults to every six or seven students. “Students are really able to focus in and learn,” she said.

    On average, students participate in the program for a year to a year and a half, Dreischmeier said. Most then move back to their local community school. Some are recommended for further services, including residential and outpatient mental health programs.

    Surprised by hope

    After two years at Children’s Day Treatment, Ann’s middle son graduated  last year. Though he struggled in the beginning, she said, he eventually settled in and found success.

    “His graduation was the most incredible thing,” Ann recalled. “Staff said he’d emerged as a leader. We did not know that about my son. To hear his peers get up and give their testimonies about him – there was not a dry eye in the room.”

    Today, he’s enrolled at a school in her home district – something she never thought possible – where he continues to receive special education support. Ann’s youngest son enrolled at Children’s Day Treatment in the fall. She’s optimistic: “I’m just grateful for people like them who want to help children like mine.”

    This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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  • Inside Schools’ Teen Nicotine Crackdown – The 74

    Inside Schools’ Teen Nicotine Crackdown – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

    It was in physical education class when Laila Gutierrez swapped out self-harm for a new vice: Vaping.

    Like students across the country, Gutierrez got dragged into a nicotine-fueled war between vape manufacturers, who used celebrity marketing and fruity flavors to hook kids on e-cigarettes, and educators, who’ve turned to surveillance tools and discipline to crack down on the youngest users. Gutierrez was suspended for a week after she was nabbed vaping in a crowded school bathroom during her lunch hour. 

    In my latest investigative deep dive, co-published this week with WIRED, I reveal how school districts across the country have spent millions to install vape-detecting sensors in school bathrooms — once considered a digital surveillance no-go. The devices prioritize punishment to combat student nicotine addiction.

    Eamonn Fitzmaurice/The 74

    My analysis of public records obtained from Minneapolis Public Schools reveals the sensors inundated administrators with alerts — about one per minute during a typical school day, on average. Their presence brought a spike in school discipline, records show, with suspensions dwarfing treatment services and younger middle school students facing the harshest consequences. 

    The sheer volume of alerts, more than 45,000 over seven months across four schools, raises questions about whether they’re an effective way to get kids to give up their vape pens. And some students voiced privacy concerns about the sensors, the most high tech of which can now reportedly detect keywords, how many young people are in the bathroom at one time and for how long. 

    “Surveillance is only a diagnosis,” Texas student activist Cameron Samuels told me. “It only recognizes symptoms of a failed system.”  

    In the news

    Charlotte, North Carolina, school officials reported more than 30,000 students absent on Monday, two days after federal immigration agents arrested 130 people there in their latest sweep. That more recent data point underscores the 81,000 school days missed by more than 100,000 students in California’s Central Valley after immigration raids earlier this year, according to a newly peer reviewed Stanford University study. | The 74

    • Los Angeles schools have lost thousands of immigrant students — from 157,619 in the 2018-19 school year to just 62,000 this year — because of the city’s rising prices and falling birth rates. Now, that trend has intensified after the “chilling effect” of recent federal immigration raids, district officials said. | The 74
    • Student enrollment is dropping in school districts across the country amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. In Miami, for example, the number of new immigrant students has decreased by more than 10,000 compared to last year. | The Associated Press

    Ten Commandments: Siding with the families of students who argued they infringed on their religious freedom, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered some Texas public school districts to remove Ten Commandment displays from their classroom walls by next month. | The New York Times

    • 28 Bills, Ten Commandments and 1 Source: A Christian Right ‘Bill Mill’. | The 74

    Online gaming platform Roblox announced it will block children from interacting with teens and adults in the wake of lawsuits alleging the platform has been used by predators to groom young people. | The Guardian

    Furry and freaky: “Kumma,” a Chinese-made teddy bear with artificial intelligence capabilities and marketed toward children, is being pulled from shelves after researchers found it could teach its users how to light matches and about sexual kinks. | Futurism

    A teenage girl from New York reported to a police officer at school that her adoptive father had been raping her at home for years. The officer, who didn’t believe her, bungled the case — and she was abused again. | New York Focus

    ‘Brazen cruelty’: A federal judge has ordered the release of a 16-year-old Bronx high schooler who has spent nearly a month in federal immigration custody despite having a protective status reserved for immigrant youth who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent. | amNewYork

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    Get the most critical news and information about students’ rights, safety and well-being delivered straight to your inbox.

    Civil rights groups have decried proposed federal changes to the Education Department’s data collection on racial disparities in special education that could make it more difficult to identify and address service gaps. | K-12 Dive

    ‘Dead-naming’ enforced: A Texas law now requires school employees to use names and pronouns that conform to students’ sex at birth. Several transgender students whose schools are complying say it has transformed school from a place of support to one that rejects who they are. | The Texas Tribune.

    ICYMI @The74

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon has signed agreements with other agencies to take over major K-12 and higher education programs in keeping with President Donald Trump’s effort to shut down the Department of Education. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    Emotional Support

    “Let’s circle back in 2026.”

    -Taittinger, already


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  • Duty of care isn’t about mental health, it’s about preventing harm

    Duty of care isn’t about mental health, it’s about preventing harm

    When people talk about a “duty of care” in higher education, the conversation almost always circles back to mental health – to counselling services, wellbeing strategies, or suicide prevention.

    It’s understandable. Those are visible, urgent needs. But the phrase “duty of care” carries far more weight than any one policy or pastoral initiative.

    It reaches into every space where universities hold power over students’ lives, and every context where harm is foreseeable and preventable.

    That misunderstanding has shaped national policy, too. When over 128,000 people petitioned Parliament for a statutory duty of care in 2023, the Government’s response was to establish the Higher Education Mental Health Implementation Taskforce – a body focused on mental health and suicide prevention.

    Its four objectives spoke volumes – boosting University Mental Health Charter sign-ups, expanding data analytics to flag students in distress, promoting “compassionate communications” to guide staff interactions with students and, where appropriate, with families, and overseeing a National Review of Higher Education Student Suicides.

    These were not bad aims – but they did not speak to the duty that had been demanded. None addressed the legal, structural, or preventative responsibilities that underpin a real duty of care.

    The Taskforce has tackled symptoms, not systems – outcomes, not obligations. By focusing on “student mental health,” the issue became more comfortable – easier to manage within existing policy frameworks and reputational boundaries.

    It allowed the sector to appear to act, while sidestepping the harder questions of legal clarity, parity, and the accountability owed to those who were harmed, failed, or lost.

    In a 2023 Wonkhe article, Sunday Blake made this point with striking clarity. “Duty of care,” she wrote, “is not just about suicide prevention.”

    Nor, by extension, is duty of care just about mental health. Universities shape students’ experiences through housing, assessment, social structures, disciplinary systems, placement arrangements, and daily communications.

    They wield influence that can support, endanger, empower or neglect. If the phrase “duty of care” is to mean anything, it must cover the full spectrum of foreseeable harm – not only the moments of crisis but the conditions that allow harm to build unseen.

    Importantly, this broader understanding of duty of care is not confined to campaigners or bereaved families. The British Medical Association has also recently called for a statutory duty of care across higher education, after hundreds of medical students reported sexual misconduct, harassment, and institutional neglect in a UK-wide survey.

    Drawing on evidence from its Medical Students Committee, the BMA argued that universities hold both knowledge and control, and therefore must bear legal responsibility for preventing foreseeable harm. Crucially, the BMA understands duty of care as a legal obligation – not a wellbeing initiative. Their intervention shows that this is not a niche debate about mental health, but a structural failure across the entire higher-education sector.

    That wider perspective is not a theoretical question. It has been tested – violently, publicly, and avoidably – in real life.

    The stabbing

    In October 2009, Katherine Rosen was a third-year pre-med student at UCLA, one of America’s leading public universities. She was attending a routine chemistry class – an ordinary academic setting – when another student, Damon Thompson, approached her from behind and stabbed her in the neck and chest with a kitchen knife. He nearly killed her.

    It was sudden. It was unprovoked. But it was not unexpected.

    Thompson had a long, documented history of paranoid delusions. University psychiatrists had diagnosed him with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. He reported hearing voices and believed classmates were plotting against him.

    He had been expelled from university housing after multiple altercations. He told staff he was thinking about hurting others. He had specifically named Katherine in a complaint – claiming she had called him “stupid” during lab work.

    Staff knew. Multiple professionals were aware of his condition – and the risks he posed. Just one day before the attack, he was discussed at a campus risk assessment meeting. And yet – no action was taken. No warning was issued, no protection was offered, and no safeguarding plan was put in place.

    Katherine was left completely unaware. Because the university chose to do nothing.

    The legal battle

    After surviving the attack, Katherine took an action that would shape the future of student safety law in the United States – she sued her university.

    Her claim was simple but profound. UCLA, she argued, had a special relationship with her as a student. That relationship – based on enrolment, proximity, institutional control, and expectation of care – created a legal duty to protect her from foreseeable harm. And that duty, she said, had been breached.

    She wasn’t demanding perfection or suggesting universities could prevent every imaginable harm. She asked a basic question – if a student has been clearly identified as a threat, and the university knows it, doesn’t it have a legal responsibility to act before someone gets seriously hurt – or killed?

    UCLA’s response? No. The university claimed it had no legal duty to protect adult students from the criminal acts of others – even when it was aware of a risk. This wasn’t their responsibility, they said. Universities weren’t guardians, and students weren’t children. No duty, no breach, no liability.

    Their argument rested on a key principle of common law, shared by both the US and UK – that legal duties of care only arise in specific, established situations. Traditionally, adult-to-adult relationships – like those between a university and its students – did not automatically create such duties. Courts are cautious – they don’t want to impose sweeping responsibilities on institutions that may be unreasonable or unmanageable. But that argument ignores a crucial reality – the power imbalance, the structure, and the unique environment of university life.

    The judgment

    Katherine’s case wound its way through the California courts for almost ten years. At every level, the same question remained – does a university owe a duty of care to its students in classroom settings, especially when it is aware of a specific risk?

    Finally, in 2018, the California Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling in her favour.

    The Court held – by a clear majority – that yes, universities do owe such a duty. Not universally, not in every context – but during curricular activities, and particularly when risks are foreseeable, they must take reasonable protective measures.

    The judgment clarified that a “special relationship” exists between universities and their students, based on the student’s dependence on the university for a “safe environment.” That relationship created not just moral expectations but legal ones.

    In the Court’s own words:

    Phrased at the appropriate level of generality, then, the question here is not whether UCLA could predict that Damon Thompson would stab Katherine Rosen in the chemistry lab. It is whether a reasonable university could foresee that its negligent failure to control a potentially violent student, or to warn students who were foreseeable targets of his ire, could result in harm to one of those students.

    That emphasis on warning mattered. The Court was clear that the duty it recognised did not demand extraordinary measures or perfect foresight. The minimum reasonable step UCLA could have taken — and failed to take — was to warn Katherine or put in place basic protective actions once staff knew she was a potential target. It was this failure at the most elementary level of safeguarding that brought the duty sharply into focus.

    And again:

    Colleges [universities] provide academic courses in exchange for a fee, but a college is far more to its students than a business. Residential colleges provide living spaces, but they are more than mere landlords. Along with educational services, colleges provide students social, athletic, and cultural opportunities. Regardless of the campus layout, colleges provide a discrete community for their students. For many students, college is the first time they have lived away from home. Although college students may no longer be minors under the law, they may still be learning how to navigate the world as adults. They are dependent on their college communities to provide structure, guidance, and a safe learning environment.

    This ruling was a seismic moment. It wasn’t just about Katherine – it was about thousands of other students, across hundreds of other classrooms, who could now expect, not merely hope, that their university would act when danger loomed.

    The precedent was narrow but profound

    This victory came at a cost. It took nearly a decade of litigation, immense emotional strength, and personal resilience. And even in success, the ruling was carefully limited in scope:

    … that universities owe a duty to protect students from foreseeable violence during curricular activities.

    The duty applied only to harm that was:

    • Foreseeable,
    • Tied to curricular activities, and
    • Within the university’s ability to prevent.

    It did not impose a sweeping obligation on universities to protect students in all circumstances – nor should it. But it decisively rejected the idea that universities have no duty to protect.

    This distinction – between the impossible and the reasonable – is crucial. The court did not ask universities to do the impossible. It simply expected them to act reasonably when aware of a real and specific risk to student safety. That principle sets a clear floor, not an unreachable ceiling, for institutional responsibility.

    It also highlights a broader truth – duty of care in higher education is not a binary. It is not all or nothing. A range of duties may arise depending on the setting – academic, residential, or social – or the nature of the risk. The more control a university exercises, and the more vulnerable the student, the greater the duty it may owe.

    This is not about creating impossible expectations – it is about recognising that responsibility must follow power.

    That same logic – and the emerging recognition of limited but enforceable duties – has begun to surface in UK courts. In Feder and McCamish v The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, a County Court held that higher education institutions have a duty of care to carry out reasonable investigations when they receive allegations of sexual assault:

    …by taking reasonable protective, supportive, investigatory and, when appropriate, disciplinary steps and in associated communications.

    Again, where institutions have knowledge and control, the law expects a proportionate response.

    But it is important to recognise just how narrow the duty was in Feder & McCamish. The College already had safeguarding procedures in place, and liability arose only because it failed to follow the process it had voluntarily adopted when students reported serious sexual assault.

    The court did not recognise any general duty to protect student welfare – it simply enforced the College’s own promises. It illustrates the limits of UK law – duties arise only in piecemeal, procedural ways, leaving large gaps in protection whenever an institution has not explicitly committed itself to a particular process, or chooses not to follow it.

    Why this story matters now

    The Rosen judgment exposes a truth that too many still miss. Duty of care in higher education is not about expanding counselling teams or implementing wellbeing charters. It’s about the structure of responsibility itself – who knows what, who can act, and who must act when risk is foreseeable.

    In Katherine Rosen’s case, mental health support for Damon Thompson already existed. What failed was the system around him – communication, coordination, and the willingness to protect others. The danger was known, the mechanisms to prevent it were available, and the decision to use them was not taken.

    That is why framing “duty of care” as a question of mental health provision misses the point. Whether the risk is psychological, physical, financial, or reputational, the same principle applies – when institutions hold both knowledge and control, they owe a duty to act with care.

    From assaults in halls to exploitation on placements, from harassment ignored to risks left unmonitored, the duty of care spans far more than mental health. It is about foreseeable harm in any form. It is about accountability that matches authority. It is about creating a culture in which doing nothing or ignoring what you know is no longer an option.

    As Parliament prepares to debate the issue once again, the Rosen case stands as a reminder that this conversation cannot stop at wellbeing. The question is not whether universities should care about students’ mental health – of course they should. The question is whether they will take responsibility for the predictable consequences of their own systems, structures, and decisions.

    Katherine Rosen’s survival – and her long legal struggle – gave the world a clearer definition of that responsibility. It showed that duty of care is not about offering sympathy after the fact, but about preventing foreseeable harm before it happens. That is the real meaning of duty of care in higher education – and it is the clarity the UK still urgently lacks.

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  • Everyone cares until someone asks for a statute

    Everyone cares until someone asks for a statute

    Parliament will soon return to the question of a statutory duty of care in higher education, because the first debate did not deliver the clarity or action that was needed.

    The Post-16 education and skills white paper flags the issue – noting that a new Higher Education Student Support Champion will work to address the recommendations from the National Review into Higher Education Student Suicides.

    More than three university students in England and Wales die by suicide every week. The duty to protect students from reasonably foreseeable harm is long overdue. Voluntary measures and optional good practice are no substitute for a clear legal duty.

    The first parliamentary debate on this issue, held in 2023, left a crucial question unanswered – what does “duty of care” actually mean, and why do so many people believe universities already have one?

    Every conversation about “duty of care” in higher education eventually runs into confusion. Some say universities already have one. Others insist they don’t. Both sound right – and both can’t be wrong. The problem is that “duty of care” means very different things depending on who’s speaking.

    For families, it’s a promise of protection. For universities, it’s a matter of professional judgment. For lawyers, it’s a term of art – a legal threshold that decides whether the law even applies when harm occurs. But there’s a simple way to make sense of it – by borrowing a shape from soil science.

    So as MPs prepare to revisit the issue, here I’ve set out a way to understand the debate in visual form – through what I’ve called the Legal Duty of Care Triangle. It shows, at a glance, why legal definitions, government policy, and public expectation have drifted so far apart – and why that gap matters now more than ever.

    The concept

    A ternary diagram is a triangular graph used to represent systems with three components that sum to a constant, typically 100 per cent. While traditionally employed in the physical sciences – in chemistry, geology or soil classification – to show compositional data, it can also be a powerful conceptual model for non-scientific problems.

    By using the three corners of a triangle to represent three competing factors, we can visualise the balance between them and the resulting outcome.

    The same idea can explain the legal concept of duty of care. Imagine a triangle whose corners are labelled “making things worse,” “doing nothing,” and “making things better.” Every decision, omission or intervention made by an institution can be plotted somewhere within that space. The position tells you what kind of care – or lack of care – is at play, and whether the law of negligence currently recognises it.

    Acts, omissions and the Tindall judgment

    The distinction between acts and omissions runs through English law. Courts are willing to impose liability for acts that cause harm, but rarely for failures to act, even when the need for intervention was obvious.

    The Supreme Court reaffirmed this in Tindall v Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police [2024] UKSC 44, describing the difference between “making things worse” and “failing to make things better.” The law punishes the first but usually overlooks the second, unless a “special relationship” creates a specific obligation to act.

    That single distinction explains why so many student cases – including Abrahart v University of Bristol (Court of Appeal, 2024) – fail to establish a general duty of care. The courts accept that mistakes were made, and even that harm was foreseeable, but can decline to impose liability by characterising the university’s failings as “pure omissions”, not actions that “made things worse.”

    In the conceptual model, the three corners of the triangle represent three strategic approaches an institution might take when faced with foreseeable risk:

    • Making things better – Proactive action. Taking reasonable and timely steps to prevent foreseeable harm. This might include implementing sound procedures, addressing emerging risks, and responding appropriately when warning signs are clear.
    • Making things worse – Negligent action. Acts or decisions that foreseeably create or aggravate harm — for example, ignoring evidence, mishandling complaints, or enforcing policies that intensify vulnerability or risk.
    • Doing nothing – Passive inaction. A failure to act when an institution knows, or ought reasonably to know, that intervention is required. Courts are generally reluctant to impose broad affirmative duties, but complete inaction in the face of foreseeable harm can potentially still give rise to liability under existing legal frameworks such as negligence or equality law.

    The triangle shows how these behaviours relate to one another.

    • At the bottom left lies making things worse – acts of commission that cause harm.
    • At the bottom right, doing nothing – omissions or institutional inertia.
    • At the top, making things better – protective, preventive steps taken with reasonable care.

    The law, as it stands, occupies mainly the lower portion of the triangle. It is most comfortable along the base, where harmful acts are distinguished from mere inaction. The upper space – proactive prevention – sits largely outside the common-law field.

    Cause, not prevent

    One organisation sits in a particularly revealing place on the triangle – Universities UK (UUK).

    Unlike the Department for Education or the courts, UUK has consistently described universities as already having a common law “general duty of care.” At first glance, that sounds like agreement with campaigners – but it isn’t.

    What UUK actually means is a general duty not to cause harm through acts or omissions. It’s a subtle but crucial difference. It is referring to a reactive duty – one concerned with causation of harm, not prevention of reasonably foreseeable harm.

    For example, if an institution takes a clear and identifiable act — such as issuing incorrect information, mishandling a process, or withdrawing essential support — and that conduct foreseeably causes or worsens harm, the law may treat the situation as one of direct causation.

    If the institution then fails to correct or mitigate the error once aware of it, that omission becomes part of the same chain of causation.In such cases, the duty extends to omissions only when they form part of that chain, not where the institution simply fails to prevent a wider or unrelated risk..

    In legal terms, this remains a negative duty (to avoid causing harm), not a positive duty (to take steps to prevent it). It recognises that omissions can sometimes “cause” harm where there’s a direct link, but it doesn’t impose any obligation to foresee and prevent it.

    That distinction between cause and prevent defines UUK’s unique position. It sits within the existing boundaries of common law because it focuses on reactive duties — those that arise only when harm has already been caused.

    This is the source of much public confusion: UUK uses the language of care to describe a legal concept concerned solely with causation.

    The result is a comforting vocabulary that sounds protective but, in practice, stops at the point of legal liability.

    When UUK says that universities already have a duty of care, it means a duty not to make things worse, rather than a duty to make things better. The same words – but different worlds.

    Responsibility without liability

    The original petition did not ask for improved guidance or voluntary measures. It called for a statutory legal duty of care – a clearly defined obligation in law requiring universities to take reasonable steps to protect students from foreseeable harm.

    Yet when the government issued its 2023 petition response, it appeared to suggest that such a duty already existed. The statement claimed that universities “already have a general duty of care to not cause harm to their students” and “are expected to act reasonably to protect the health, safety and welfare of their students”. Language that sounded legal but was not.

    At that stage, the Department for Education (DfE) was describing something closer to an ethical or moral responsibility – a general expectation that institutions should act responsibly – while borrowing the vocabulary of law. It gave the public the reassurance of legal certainty without any of its substance. The explicit legal framing emerged only later.

    In response to a Parliamentary Question tabled shortly before the Westminster Hall debate, Minister Robert Halfon used the phrase “law of negligence.”

    This was the first time the Department had explicitly tied its earlier petition response to that legal doctrine, implying that it had always referred to common-law principles. From that point onward, this became the Department’s preferred line – not as clarification, but as post-hoc justification.

    Then, in early 2025, Janet Daby MP, Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing in the Department for Education (DfE). appeared to reset the conversation. In a Parliamentary Question response she acknowledged that a duty of care may arise in certain circumstances, but that this would be a matter for the courts to determine. This was a noticeable change in tone – a more candid admission that no general legal duty exists and that the issue remains legally unsettled.

    Her statement offered welcome clarity after years of obfuscation, though it still stopped short of committing the Department to legislative reform.

    The same careful phrasing was subsequently used in a formal letter from the Department dated 16 July 2025, confirming that this “reset” had become its official position:

    A duty of care in higher education may arise in certain circumstances. Such circumstances would be a matter for the courts to decide… The common law allows flexibility, without the potential rigidity that may arise from codifying a statutory duty.

    The evolution reveals rhetorical movement but positional continuity.

    The Department has, in reality, always occupied the same place – outside the legal boundary of the triangle, in the zone of responsibility without liability. What changed was not the position itself but the language used to describe it.

    The 2023 response disguised that position through legal-sounding reassurance; the 2025 reset finally admitted what had been true all along — that no general legal duty exists and that the matter rests with the courts. In other words, DfE continues to speak of care, support and best practice, but refuses to define those commitments in law.

    When the risk is radicalisation, the government imposes a statutory Prevent Duty, but when the risk is harm to students, it hides behind the flexibility of common law.

    The real world

    Once the triangle exists, it becomes possible to plot where each actor sits – and, crucially, what that reveals about how they understand “duty of care.”

    At the bottom centre sit the courts, which define the legal floor of responsibility. Their judgments focus on causation, proximity, and foreseeability – deciding whether an act or omission was sufficiently connected to the harm suffered to give rise to a duty.

    They don’t occupy either corner of the base because they navigate between them – recognising liability for acts that make things worse, but rarely for omissions that cause or contribute to the problem, or simply fail to make things better.

    Their position therefore represents the balancing point of the common law – the threshold where duty ends and moral expectation begins.

    Along that same base lies UUK, which has translated the courts’ caution into sector orthodoxy. UUK’s “general duty not to cause harm” adopts the courts’ reasoning as a policy principle – treating the lower boundary of the triangle as the full extent of universities’ obligations. In effect, the courts define the boundary, and UUK defends it.

    Moving rightwards along the base, universities sit midway between the courts and the “doing nothing” corner, invoking autonomy and professional judgment to argue that support and intervention are matters of discretion rather than law.

    Then just outside that edge sits the Department for Education, which talks in moral terms of “responsibility” and “care” but refuses to anchor those ideas in law. It operates in the space of responsibility without liability.

    Above them all, beyond the apex marked “making things better,” lies public expectation – the belief that institutions should act to prevent foreseeable harm, not merely avoid causing it.

    This moral position sits outside the present legal framework but defines the social direction of travel.

    Between these two levels – between the courts’ current legal boundary and the moral high ground of public expectation – lies the proposed statutory duty of care.

    It would still sit along the base axis of law, midway between making things worse and doing nothing, but it would rise vertically within the triangle – recognising that the law must not only avoid harm but also act to prevent it where reasonably foreseeable, just as Parliament has already required through the Prevent Duty.

    In that sense, a statutory duty would lift the legal threshold upward, not outward – retaining the structure of the common law but extending its reach to address public expectation.

    The triangle naturally narrows as it rises. In legal terms, that tapering reflects how rarely the courts recognise proactive duties. A statutory duty of care would not alter the shape of the triangle but would raise the level at which the law operates, making what is now exceptional – acting to prevent harm – part of the ordinary standard of care.

    Drawing the line

    The Legal Duty of Care Triangle is not just a visual aid, it’s a question. Every dot on it represents a choice about where responsibility should sit – inside or outside the field of law.

    Parliament now faces that same choice. The forthcoming debate is not about whether universities should care for their students – everyone agrees they should. It is about whether that care should be accountable.

    Placing the point inside the triangle would mean recognising a statutory legal duty of care – a defined obligation that lifts the existing common-law threshold so that institutions must take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm. It would introduce a clear standard of accountability, giving students and families a route to justice when that standard is not met.

    Placing the point outside the triangle leaves the status quo intact – a landscape of guidance, codes, and voluntary commitments that sound caring but lack consequence when breached. It maintains responsibility without liability – expectation without enforcement.

    That is the question before Parliament. Where should the point be placed? Inside the triangle, where care carries accountability – or outside, where it does not?

    The triangle invites everyone – not just lawyers or policymakers – to think about where they believe accountability should begin. It is less about identifying where universities are and more about asking where they should be in terms of legal accountability.

    For a university that sees its role purely as educational delivery, the point may hover near the base – within the comfort zone of “doing nothing” unless compelled. But that is the vending machine model of higher education – inputs go in, outputs come out, but no awareness or responsibility exists between the two.

    When things go wrong, the machine insists it functioned as designed – and no one accepts responsibility for the harm that results.

    For institutions that recognise their wider duty to protect students from reasonably foreseeable harm, the point moves upward, toward “making things better.”

    The purpose of our campaign is not to redraw the triangle but to raise the floor – bringing the baseline of law closer to where most people assume it already stands.

    A statutory duty of care would not expand the triangle. It would ensure that its foundation reflects modern expectations of safety, fairness, and accountability in higher education.

    What that duty would look like in practice – the mechanisms, policies, and safeguards that would follow are arguments for another day.

    The purpose here is simpler – to define the space where that conversation must take place – inside the triangle, where duty carries accountability.

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  • Students Love AI Chatbots — No, Really – The 74

    Students Love AI Chatbots — No, Really – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

    The robots have taken over.

    New research suggests that a majority of students use chatbots like ChatGPT for just about everything at school. To write essays. To solve complicated math problems. To find love. 

    Wait, what? 

    Nearly a fifth of students said they or a friend have used artificial intelligence chatbots to form romantic relationships, according to a new survey by the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology. Some 42% said they or someone they know used the chatbots for mental health support, as an escape from real life or as a friend.

    Eighty-six percent of students say they’ve used artificial intelligence chatbots in the past academic year — half to help with schoolwork.

    The tech-enabled convenience, researchers conclude, doesn’t come without significant risks for young people. Namely, as AI proliferates in schools — with help from the federal government and a zealous tech industry — on a promise to improve student outcomes, they warn that young people could grow socially and emotionally disconnected from the humans in their lives. 

    In the news

    The latest in Trump’s immigration crackdown: The survey featured above, which quizzed students, teachers and parents, also offers startling findings on immigration enforcement in schools: 
    While more than a quarter of educators said their school collects information about whether a student is undocumented, 17% said their district shares records — including grades and disciplinary information — with immigration enforcement. 

    In the last school year, 13% of teachers said a staff member at their school reported a student or parent to immigration enforcement of their own accord. | Center for Democracy & Technology

    People hold signs as New York City officials speak at a press conference calling for the release of high school student Mamadou Mouctar Diallo outside of the Tweed Courthouse on Aug. 14 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
    • Call for answers: In the wake of immigration enforcement that’s ensnared children, New York congressional Democrats are demanding the feds release information about the welfare of students held in detention, my colleague Jo Napolitano reports. | The 74
    • A 13-year-old boy from Brazil, who has lived in a Boston suburb since 2021 with a pending asylum application, was scooped up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after local police arrested him on a “credible tip” accusing him of making “a violent threat” against a classmate at school. The boy’s mother said her son wound up in a Virginia detention facility and was “desperate, saying ICE had taken him.” | CNN
    • Chicago teenagers are among a group of activists patrolling the city’s neighborhoods to monitor ICE’s deployment to the city and help migrants avoid arrest. | NPR
    • Immigration agents detained a Chicago Public Schools vendor employee outside a school, prompting educators to move physical education classes indoors out of an “abundance of caution.” | Chicago Sun-Times
    • A Des Moines, Iowa, high schooler was detained by ICE during a routine immigration check-in, placed in a Louisiana detention center and deported to Central America fewer than two weeks later. | Des Moines Register
    • A 15-year-old boy with disabilities — who was handcuffed outside a Los Angeles high school after immigration agents mistook him for a suspect — is among more than 170 U.S. citizens, including nearly 20 children, who have been detained during the first nine months of the president’s immigration push. | PBS

    Trigger warning: After a Washington state teenager hanged himself on camera, the 13-year-old boy’s parents set out to find out what motivated their child to livestream his suicide on Instagram while online users watched. Evidence pointed to a sadistic online group that relies on torment, blackmail and coercion to weed out teens they deem weak. | The Washington Post

    Civil rights advocates in New York are sounding the alarm over a Long Island school district’s new AI-powered surveillance system, which includes round-the-clock audio monitoring with in-classroom microphones. | StateScoop

    A federal judge has ordered the Department of Defense to restock hundreds of books after a lawsuit alleged students were banned from checking out texts related to race and gender from school libraries on military bases in violation of the First Amendment. | Military.com

    More than 600 armed volunteers in Utah have been approved to patrol campuses across the state to comply with a new law requiring armed security. Called school guardians, the volunteers are existing school employees who agree to be trained by local law enforcement and carry guns on campus. | KUER

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    No “Jackass”: Instagram announced new PG-13 content features that restrict teenagers from viewing posts that contain sex, drugs and “risky stunts.” | The Associated Press

    A Tuscaloosa, Alabama, school resource officer restrained and handcuffed a county commissioner after a spat at an elementary school awards program. | Tuscaloosa News

    The number of guns found at Minnesota schools has increased nearly threefold in the last several years, new state data show. | Axios

    More than half of Florida’s school districts received bomb threats on a single evening last week. The threats weren’t credible, officials said, and appeared to be “part of a hoax intended to solicit money.” | News 6

    ICYMI @The74

    RAPID Survey Project, Stanford Center on Early Childhood

    Survey: Nearly Half of Families with Young Kids Struggling to Meet Basic Needs

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    —Marz


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  • Comparing students with the general population is misleading when it comes to suicide

    Comparing students with the general population is misleading when it comes to suicide

    The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published new estimates of suicides among higher education students, linking mortality records with student data between 2016 and 2023.

    The findings are stark – 1,108 student deaths by suicide over seven years – an average of 160 each year, or more than three every week.

    The headline takeaway, however, is that the suicide rate among students is lower than that of the general population of similar age. While technically correct, this framing is misleading and risks creating a false sense of reassurance.

    The ONS emphasises that these are “statistics in development.” They are the product of recent advances in linking mortality and student record data, improving on older estimates. In that sense, this is important progress.

    But the way the figures have been presented follows a familiar pattern: the headline is built around a simple comparison with the general population. It is neat, digestible, and apparently positive – yet it obscures more than it reveals.

    This matters because the way numbers are framed shapes public understanding, institutional behaviour, and government response. If the story is “lower than average,” the implicit message is that the sector is performing relatively well. That is not the story these figures should be telling.

    University students are not the “general population.” They are a distinct, filtered group. To reach higher education, young people must cross academic, financial, and often social thresholds. Many with the most acute or destabilising mental health challenges never make it to university, or leave when unwell.

    The student body is also not demographically representative. Despite widening participation efforts, it remains disproportionately white and relatively affluent. Comparing suicide rates across groups with such different profiles is not comparing “like with like.”

    In this context, a lower suicide rate is exactly what one would expect. The fact that the rate is not dramatically lower should be a cause for concern, not comfort.

    The dangers of statistical manipulation

    It is easy to play with denominators. For example, students are in teaching and assessment for around 30 weeks of the year, not 52. If suicide risk were confined to term time, the weekly rate among students would exceed that of their peers.

    But this recalculation is no better than the ONS comparison. Not all student deaths occur in term, and not all risks align neatly with the academic calendar.

    You could take the logic further still. We already know there are peak moments in the academic cycle when deaths are disproportionately high – the start of the year, exam and assessment periods, and end-of-year transitions or progressions. If you recalculated suicide rates just for those concentrated stress points, the apparent risk would rise dramatically.

    And that is the problem – once you start adjusting denominators in this way, you can make the statistics say almost anything. Both framings – “lower overall” and “higher in term” – shift attention away from the fundamental issue. Are students adequately protected in higher education?

    Universities are not average society. They are meant to be semi-protected environments, with pastoral care, residential support, student services, and staff trained to spot risks. Institutions advertise themselves as supportive communities. Parents and students reasonably expect that studying at university will be safer than life outside it.

    On that measure, the reality of more than three suicides a week is sobering. Whatever the relative rate, this is not “safe enough.”

    Averages conceal inequalities

    Aggregate rates also obscure critical differences within the student body. The ONS data show that:

    • Male students die by suicide at more than twice the rate of female students.
    • First-year undergraduates face significantly higher risk than later-year students.
    • Part-time students have higher rates than full-time peers.
    • Among 17–20 year-olds, nearly one in five suicides were students.

    Headline averages conceal these inequalities. A “lower than average” message smooths over the very groups that most need targeted intervention.

    Another striking feature is the absence of sector data. Universities do not systematically track student suicides. Instead, families must rely on official statisticians retrospectively linking death certificates with student records, often years later.

    If the sector truly regarded these figures as reassuring, one might expect institutions to record and publish them. The reluctance to do so instead signals avoidance. Without routine monitoring, lessons cannot be learned in real time and accountability is diluted.

    7. The missing legal duty

    These challenges sit within a wider context – universities have no statutory duty of care towards their students. Families bereaved by suicide encounter unclear lines of accountability. Institutions operate on voluntary frameworks, policies, and codes of practice which are not always followed.

    In that vacuum, numbers take on disproportionate weight. If statistics suggest the sector is “doing better than average,” the pressure for reform weakens. Yet the reality is that more than 1,100 students have died in seven years in what is supposed to be a protective environment.

    Other countries offer a different perspective. In Australia, student wellbeing is embedded in national higher education policy frameworks. In the United States, campus suicide rates are monitored more systematically, and institutions are under clearer obligations to respond. The UK’s fragmented, voluntary approach looks increasingly out of step.

    The new ONS dataset is valuable, but its framing risks repeating old mistakes. If we want real progress, three changes are needed:

    1. Better data – universities must keep their own records, enabling faster learning and transparency.
    2. Sharper framing – comparisons should focus on whether students are safe enough in higher education, not whether they are marginally “better than average.”
    3. Clearer accountability – a statutory duty of care would ensure that institutions cannot hide behind averages and voluntary codes.

    The ONS release should not be read as reassurance. Both the official comparison with the general population and alternative recalculations that exaggerate term-time risk are statistical manipulations. They distract from the central point – 160 students a year, more than three every week, are dying by suicide in higher education.

    Universities are meant to be safer than average society. The reality shows otherwise. Until higher education is bound by a legal duty of care and institutions commit to transparency and accountability, statistical debates will continue to obscure systemic failures – while friends and families will continue to bear the consequences.

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