Tag: harassment

  • Here’s how institutions are faring in handling harassment and sexual misconduct complaints

    Here’s how institutions are faring in handling harassment and sexual misconduct complaints

    Evidence suggests that significant numbers of students experience or are affected by harassment and sexual misconduct each year. Yet student complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) about harassment and sexual misconduct have historically formed a very small proportion of our overall caseload.

    The number of complaints about harassment and sexual misconduct we have received has been rising slowly but steadily in recent months. This may in part be a result of greater visibility at providers about mechanisms to disclose, such as “report and support” tools. This is a positive step, but there is more to be done to raise students’ confidence in how their providers can respond to reports.

    Today we have published ten case summaries and a casework note on harassment and sexual misconduct, highlighting some key issues for providers to consider when addressing complaints. Although these examples focus on sexual misconduct, the broad principles of good practice can apply across other forms of harassment.

    Taking reports seriously

    Our recent casework shows that some providers are demonstrating, via the disciplinary action they take against students reported for harassment and sexual misconduct, how seriously they view breaches of their codes of conduct. We’ve seen providers taking swift action to investigate, make findings and apply penalties. In some cases, we have seen well-reasoned and documented decisions and clearly explained outcomes.

    However, we have upheld a high proportion of the complaints we have reviewed about harassment and sexual misconduct. We have identified procedural errors and unfairness that have significantly undermined the value of the process for reporting students, and the validity of findings made against reported students.

    Overall, providers seem to have more confidence in addressing the disciplinary aspect of these complaints. Disciplinary processes are usually well established and are supported by guidance and tools such as classification of the severity of any breaches of a code of conduct and accompanying tariffs of penalties.

    There is less certainty and consistency of approach across the sector in responding to the reporting student. There may be fine nuances between a disclosure, a report or a complaint about harassment and sexual misconduct, and the manner of response to each might be slightly different. Many providers intend to be led by the reporting student’s needs, which is an admirable principle – but not always effective if the student has not been clearly informed about the options available to them and the differences between these routes.

    Sharing an outcome

    In several cases, providers haven’t understood that informing a reporting student that a disciplinary process has taken place is not a complete outcome.

    Providers need to consider how they can support students and lessen the impact upon them of the harassment or sexual misconduct they have experienced. This is especially important when the report concerns the conduct of a member of staff. In our experience, providers have tended to be more transparent about incidents between two students than they have been when a member of staff is involved.

    While providers have particular responsibilities to their employees that may be different to the obligations they have towards students, the imbalance of power makes it even more important that students understand how their complaint has been investigated and what will happen next.

    Gathering and probing evidence

    We recognise that complaints about harassment and sexual misconduct are often complex, and may involve events that unfold over a period of time, multiple incidents or involve numerous individuals. There can be constraints because of concurrent police action, which may not result in a clear outcome for several months. Cases may involve claims and counter-complaints, or turn on the credibility of the parties on nuanced issues such as consent.

    Our experience suggests that in some cases, decision makers have not fully understood the importance of moving carefully through a process that genuinely gives all parties an opportunity to tell their own story and allows for gaps and inconsistencies to be explored. It is right that all parties in these processes must be treated with respect, with kindness, and with an awareness of the impact that re-visiting an experience of harassment or sexual misconduct may have.

    But panel members who must test evidence appear to feel constrained in asking questions. Trying to re-examine or gather additional evidence at a later date can place an undue burden on all parties and prevent individuals from moving forward.

    Consultation on a new section of the Good Practice Framework

    The increased focus on tackling harassment and sexual misconduct across the sector – including the new E6 OfS regulatory condition that applies to some of the providers in our membership – is to be welcomed. The emphasis on clear information that is easy to access, and on well-resourced training for both staff and students may go some way to addressing some issues we have seen in complaints.

    In 2025, we will consult on a new section of the Good Practice Framework addressing these complex issues. It will build on the learning we have identified from our rising volume of casework. Our intention will be to draw together in one place the principles that apply to complaints about harassment and misconduct.

    We look forward to engaging with the sector to benefit from the extensive expertise of hands-on practitioners, to make this as useful a resource as possible. If you’d like to feed in at an early stage, please get in touch with us at [email protected].

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  • Collaboration is key when it comes to addressing harassment and sexual misconduct

    Collaboration is key when it comes to addressing harassment and sexual misconduct

    In all of the noise about the OfS’s new regulation on harassment and sexual misconduct there’s one area where the silence is notable and disappointing – sector collaboration.

    Back in 2022, the independent evaluation of the OfS statement of expectations on harassment and sexual misconduct made a clear recommendation that OfS and DfE “foster more effective partnership working“ both between HE providers and with those external to the sector. Now, having published details of the new condition E6 and the accompanying guidance, this seems to have been largely forgotten.

    There’s a nod to the potential benefit of collaboration in OfS’s analysis of consultation responses, but it only goes as far as to say that providers “may wish to identify collective steps” – with little explanation of what this could look like and no intention or commitment to proactively support this.

    This feels like a significant oversight, and one that is disappointing to say the least. It’s become clear from our work with IHE members that collaboration needs to be front and centre if we have any hope as a sector of delivering in this area. Without it, some providers – especially smaller ones – will not be able to meet the new requirements, creating risk and failing to achieve the consistency of practice and experience that students expect. This feels even more true given the current context of widespread financial insecurity. Any new regulation ought to be presenting mechanisms and incentives to collaborate – and reduce costs in doing so.

    Working together for a stronger sector – or only sometimes?

    The silence around collaboration is also surprising, given that in other spheres it is seen to be – and in many cases is – the solution to institutions meeting regulatory requirements and student expectations. John Blake’s latest speech on a regional approach to access and participation is just one example of this. There is implicit recognition that in this era of “diminishing resources”, working together is the solution. There’s also the recognition that partnership working needs funding – more on that later.

    It’s also surprising given that OfS has made clear that both providers in any academic partnership are responsible for compliance with the new condition, including where there’s a franchise arrangement. This seems like an open door for collaborative approaches, given that over half the providers on the register do not have their own degree awarding powers. However, as usual, it is unclear what this means in practice. There is no reference in the regulation to how the OfS would view any collaborative efforts, or examples of what this might look like in practice.

    Academic partnerships make logical collaborators

    IHE’s recent project on academic partnerships demonstrates the potential of such arrangements for collaboration that benefits both providers and their students. Our research found a number of innovative models where awarding institutions facilitated collaboration with and between their academic partners in areas including shared learning opportunities and use of shared platforms.

    There’s a clear opportunity here when it comes to staff training. All institutions need to have staff who are “appropriately trained”. Training in areas such as receiving disclosures and conducting investigations benefits from group delivery – where staff can learn from each other. A small provider might only have one or two staff who require it, meaning they are unlikely to draw much benefit from this. It would also make such training prohibitively expensive. It’s likely to need to be delivered by an external organisation (to ensure the “credible and demonstrable expertise” required) and such solutions aren’t scaled to an institution with just a handful of relevant staff. Awarding institutions sharing such group training would solve this – and also benefit shared processes in that staff across both institutions have the same level of knowledge and competence.

    A further benefit of shared training would be that partners could share staff when investigations need greater independence than a small provider can offer. This could be staff from the awarding partner, or another academic partner. This would effectively bring together useful knowledge of institutional context, policies and processes with the necessary external objectivity to run a credible investigation.

    Another opportunity for collaboration is in shared online reporting tools. These can be an effective way of encouraging disclosure, but such systems are often not scaled for small institutions. As well as being more cost-effective, sharing these could lead to greater confidence of students reporting in the independence of tool and the process that follows.

    Think local – for everyone’s sake!

    Regional or local collaboration is the other area with the potential to benefit students, providers, and other services supporting those who experience harassment or sexual misconduct.

    Local or regional collaboration on reporting and investigation can support disclosure by creating more independence in the system. The independent evaluation spoke specifically of this, recommending the facilitation of

    formal or informal shared services, such as regional support networks, and in particular regional investigation units or hubs.

    And it would enable more effective partnerships with external support services. Rather than every provider trying to establish a partnership with a local service (putting a greater burden on groups who are often charities or not-for-profits), group collaborations could streamline this. This needs to include all types of provider, including small providers and FE colleges delivering HE. This would be more efficient, reduce unhelpful competition for the limited resource of the service, and ensure that all students have access to these support services irrespective of their place of study.

    Where there aren’t local services, providers could pool resource and expertise to develop and deliver these. This would reduce competition for specialist staff in the same geographic location, and again ensure parity of support for students across providers.

    It’s important that such collaborations involve all parts of the sector, including small providers – with the burden of their participation reflective of their smaller size. This is vital to ensure that collaborative models are cost effective for everyone.

    Getting it right on student engagement

    Collaborative approaches are also going to be critical to make sure we get it right on student engagement. The OfS expectation is clear that providers work with students and their representatives to develop policies and procedures. But what happens when an institution doesn’t have an SU, or a formal representative structure, or the necessary experience in student engagement to do this? There’s a risk that it won’t be done properly or be done at all.

    We need to consider how we facilitate students to support each other to engage in co-production. This could include sharing staff or exploring the development of local student union services that bring in smaller providers or FE colleges without the means to partner with students in the way that is needed.

    Making it happen

    The sort of collaboration outlined above will need more than just the goodwill of institutions to make it happen. It needs regulatory backing, with more explicit recognition of the value of these approaches and guidance on what this might look like in practice. We also need to recognise that it’s costly.

    Catalyst funding, like that provided back in 2019, would represent far better value to the sector than asking individual providers to fund collaboration. The risk is that without it, the burden of developing a system that works for all students at all providers will be left to the smallest institutions who need these collaborative options the most. Funding would also boost evaluation and resource sharing across the sector. It could consider the benefits of collaborative approaches between awarding and teaching institutions as well as regional structures which ensure a greater parity of support across providers large and small.

    Somewhere on this path to regulation we lost the perspective that harassment and sexual misconduct is a societal issue. What we do now to educate, prevent harm to and support students will have a lasting impact on the future as students become employees, employers, parents and educators themselves. It is not a task to be shouldered alone.

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