Tag: requires

  • The future of HTQs requires commitment and certainty from the government

    The future of HTQs requires commitment and certainty from the government

    The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) – formerly the Institute for Apprenticeships – has been central to reforms aimed at increasing standardisation and quality in technical education at all levels in England since 2017.

    As it slips into the shadows from where Skills England is about to emerge, we wanted to explore how IfATE’s work establishing a quality assurance process for level 4 and 5 technical education – launched in 2020 – could be built upon and improved.

    Since IfATE introduced the process of approving level 4 and 5 qualifications as Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs), more than 80 FE colleges, universities and awarding organisations have successfully submitted their qualifications. We decided that their experiences – and their views on the future – were a good place to start.

    We interviewed 46 individuals from 17 organisations to explore their motivations for being “early adopters” of HTQs, their feedback on the approval process itself, and their recommendations for making it better. Ultimately we were keen to find out what would encourage and enable more organisations to apply for HTQ status for their qualifications, and in this way help address the “missing middle” of England’s workforce skills. The full report can be read here.

    Managing a heavy burden

    Unsurprisingly, a strong recommendation was to make the approvals process less burdensome. There was widespread appreciation of the support provided by IfATE, and evidence of their responsiveness to early adopters’ feedback across all five cycles of HTQ approvals. This said, respondents noted that mapping qualifications – particularly those with multiple pathways – to the knowledge, skills and behaviours of occupational standards remained complex and time consuming.

    It was clear that the level of resource and responsiveness shown by IfATE needs to be maintained by Skills England, particularly as occupational standards continue to evolve, and new awarding bodies come into the fold. However, our respondents also noted that manageability could be improved if the approvals process became more integrated with extant internal and external quality assurance and approvals processes, including professional body accreditations.

    Gaining traction, but slowly

    Reassuringly, many of our respondents reported that one positive outcome of getting their qualifications ready for HTQ approval was the stimulation of renewed engagement with employers – with benefits that went beyond simply endorsing the qualification at hand.

    Similarly, for some respondents the decision about whether to put forward a qualification for approval had acted as a catalyst for the further engagement and support of senior leaders in their organisation with higher technical education (HTE) – as part of their widening participation commitments and/or their portfolio diversification and growth.

    Yet alongside this positivity, respondents reported that awareness of the HTQ quality mark, and what it represents, remains low among prospective students and employers. A key reason for this was seen to be a lack of commitment from the Department for Education (DfE) to widespread and visible brand backing.

    DfE did make funding available to successful applicants via the HTE Growth Fund in 2021, and two further rounds of HTE Skills Injection Funds (including funding for localised marketing) – but the potential clawback of these funds should recruitment not meet projected numbers led to some uncertainty about the benefits of applying for short term and unconfirmed funding streams.

    If even those organisations who have already been successful in getting HTQ approval are feeling dubious about the future, then clearly much more needs to be done to encourage those who have not yet entered the field.

    Let’s not forget the missing middle

    There is no reason to doubt that the current government cares about addressing the skills gap known as the “missing middle”, as ignoring it may pose serious risks to growth and opportunity missions. So we – and the many organisations that have invested in HTQs and wish to see them flourish and thrive – have a couple of hopes.

    First, that Skills England maintains strong and continuous engagement with current and future HTQ providers – providing good labour market data on what qualifications are needed, offering personalised support during the approval process, and engaging with the wider sector in order to improve the process.

    But also, we hope that DfE can quickly resolve funding uncertainties for HTQs – including their potential for funding under the growth and skills levy and their primacy in the rollout of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement – and that the department showcases this commitment through a national marketing campaign. This could include building an HTQ ambassadors network, and an annual HTQ celebratory week (similar to those currently supported for T levels and apprenticeships).

    The latest data from DfE shows that in 2022–23 numbers of entrants for Level 4 and 5 education increased after a long period of decline. The contribution of HTQs to this increase may well be small but the strong focus on HTE since 2017, from which HTQ approval arose, will have contributed. We’ve made a great start – let’s not lose momentum now.

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  • Effective academic support requires good data transparency

    Effective academic support requires good data transparency

    Academic support for students is an essential component of their academic success. At a time when resources are stretched, it is critical that academic support structures operate as a well-oiled machine, where each component has a clearly defined purpose and operates effectively as a whole.

    We previously discussed how personal and pastoral tutoring, provided by academic staff, needs to be supplemented by specialist academic support. A natural next step is to consider what that specialist support could look like.

    A nested model

    We’ve identified four core facets of effective academic support, namely personal tutoring (advising/coaching/mentoring etc), the development of academic skills and graduate competencies, all supported by relevant student engagement data. The nested model below displays this framework.

    We also suggest two prerequisites to the provision of academic support.

    Firstly, a student must have access to information related to what academic support entails and how to access this. Secondly, a student’s wellbeing means that they can physically, mentally, emotionally and financially engage with their studies, including academic support opportunities.

    Figure 1: Academic support aspects within a student success nested model

    Focusing on academic support

    Personal tutoring has a central role to play within the curriculum and within academic provision more broadly in enabling student success.

    That said, “academic support” comprises much more than a personal tutoring system where students go for generic advice and support.

    Rather, academic support is an interconnected system with multiple moving parts tailored within each institution and comprising different academic, professional and third-space stakeholders.

    Yet academics remain fundamental to the provision of academic support given their subject matter expertise, industry knowledge and their proximity to students. This is why academics are traditionally personal tutors and historically, this is where the academic support model would have ended. Changes in student needs means the nature of personal tutoring has needed to be increasingly complemented by other forms of academic support.

    Skills and competencies

    Academic skills practitioners can offer rich insights in terms of how best to shape and deliver academic support.

    A broad conception of academic skills that is inclusive of academic literacies, maths, numeracy and stats, study skills, research and information literacy and digital literacy is a key aspect of student academic success. Student acquisition of these skills is complemented by integrated and purposeful involvement of academic skills practitioners across curriculum design, delivery and evaluation.

    Given regulatory focus on graduate outcomes, universities are increasingly expected to ensure that academic support prepares students for graduate-level employability or further study upon graduation. Much like academic skills practitioners, this emphasises the need to include careers and employability consultants in the design and delivery of integrated academic support aligned to the development of both transferable and subject-specific graduate competencies.

    Engaging data

    Data on how students are participating in their learning provides key insights for personal tutors, academic skills practitioners and colleagues working to support the development of graduate competencies.

    Platforms such as StREAM by Kortext enable a data-informed approach to working with students to optimise the provision of academic support. This holistic approach to the sharing of data alongside actionable insights further enables successful transition between support teams.

    Knowing where the support need is situated means that these limited human and financial resources can be directed to where support is most required – whether delivered on an individual or cohort basis. Moreover, targeted provision can be concentrated at relevant points over the academic year. Using engagement data contributes to efficiency drives through balancing the provision of information and guidance to all students. The evidence shows it’s both required and likely to prove effective.

    Academic support is increasingly complicated in terms of how different aspects overlap and interplay within a university’s student success ecosystem. Therefore, when adopting a systems-thinking approach to the design and delivery of academic support, universities must engage key stakeholders, primarily students, academic skills practitioners and personal tutors themselves.

    A priority should be ensuring varied roles of academic support providers are clearly defined both individually and in relation to each other.

    Similarly, facilitating the sharing of data at the individual student level about the provision of academic support should be prioritised to ensure that communication loops are closed and no students fall between service gaps.

    Given that academic support is evolving, we would welcome readers’ views of what additional aspects of academic support are necessary to student success.

    To find out more about how StREAM by Kortext can enable data-informed academic support at your institution, why not arrange a StREAM demonstration.

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  • Effective regulation requires a degree of trust

    Effective regulation requires a degree of trust

    At one point in my career, I was the CEO of a students’ union who’d been charged with attempting to tackle a culture of initiation ceremonies in sports clubs.

    One day a legal letter appeared on my desk – the jist of which was “you can’t punish these people if they didn’t know the rules”.

    We trawled back through the training and policy statements – and found moments where we’d made clear that not only did we not permit initiation ceremonies, we’d defined them as follows:

    An initiation ceremony is any event at which members of a group are expected to perform an activity as a means of gaining credibility, status or entry into that group. This peer pressure is normally (though not explicitly) exerted on first-year students or new members and may involve the consumption of alcohol, eating various foodstuffs, nudity and other behaviour that may be deemed humiliating or degrading.

    The arguments being advanced were fourfold. The first was that where we had drawn the line between freedom to have fun and harmful behaviour, both in theory and in practice, was wrong.

    The second was that we’d not really enforced anything like this before, and appeared to be wanting to make an example out of a group of students over which a complaint had been raised.

    They said that we’d failed to both engender understanding of where the line was that we were setting for those running sports clubs, and failed to make clear expectations over enforcing that line.

    And given there been no intent to cause harm, it was put to us that the focus on investigations and publishments, rather than support to clubs to organise safe(er) social activity, was both disproportionate and counter-productive.

    And so to the South coast

    I’ve been thinking quite a bit about that affair in the context of the Office for Students (OfS) decision to fine the University of Sussex some £585k over both policy and governance failings identified during its three-year investigation into free speech at Sussex.

    One of the things that you can debate endlessly – and there’s been plenty of it on the site – is where you draw the line between freedom to speak and freedom from harm.

    That’s partly because even if you have an objective of securing an environment characterised by academic freedom and freedom of speech, if you don’t take steps to cause students to feel safe, there can be a silencing effect – which at least in theory there’s quite a bit of evidence on (including inside the Office for Students).

    You can also argue that the “make an example of them” thing is unfair – but ever since a copper stopped me on the M4 doing 85mph one afternoon, I’ve been reminded of the old “you can’t prove your innocence by proving others’ guilt” line.

    Four days after OfS says it “identified reports” about an “incident” at the University of Sussex, then Director of Compliance and Student Protection Susan Lapworth took to the stage at Independent HE’s conference to signal a pivot from registration to enforcement.

    She noted that the statutory framework gave OfS powers to investigate cases where it was concerned about compliance, and to enforce compliance with conditions where it found a breach.

    She signalled that that could include requiring a provider to do something, or not do something, to fix a breach; the imposition of a monetary penalty; the suspension of registration; and the deregistration of a provider if that proved necessary.

    “That all sounds quite fierce”, she said. “But we need to understand which of these enforcement tools work best in which circumstances.” And, perhaps more importantly “what we want to achieve in using them – what’s the purpose of being fierce?”

    The answer was that OfS wanted to create incentives for all providers to comply with their conditions of registration:

    For example, regulators assume that imposing a monetary penalty on one provider will result in all the others taking steps to comply without the regulator needing to get involved.

    That was an “efficient way” to secure compliance across a whole sector, particularly for a regulator like OfS that “deliberately doesn’t re-check compliance for every provider periodically”.

    Even if you agree with the principle, you can argue that it’s pretty much failed at that over the intervening years – which is arguably why the £585k fine has come as so much of a shock.

    But it’s the other two aspects of that initiation thing – the understanding one and the character of interventions one – that I’ve also been thinking about this week in the context of the Sussex fine.

    Multiple roles

    On The Wonkhe Show, Public First’s Jonathon Simons worries about OfS’ multiple roles:

    If the Office for Students is acting in essentially a quasi-judicial capacity, they can’t, under that role, help one of the parties in a case try to resolve things. You can’t employ a judge to try and help you. But if they are also trying to regulate in the student interest, then they absolutely can and should be working with universities to try and help them navigate this – rather than saying, no, we think we know what the answer is, but you just have to keep on revising your policy, and at some point we may or may not tell you got it right.

    It’s a fair point. Too much intervention, and OfS appears compromised when enforcing penalties. Too little, and universities struggle to meet shifting expectations – ultimately to the detriment of students.

    As such, you might argue that OfS ought to draw firmer lines between its advisory and enforcement functions – ensuring institutions receive the necessary support to comply while safeguarding the integrity of its regulatory oversight. At the very least, maybe it should choose who fronts out which bits – rather than its topic style “here’s our Director for X that will both advise and crack down. ”

    But it’s not as if OfS doesn’t routinely combine advice and crack down – its access and participation function does just that. There’s a whole research spin-off dedicated to what works, extensive advice on risks to access and participation and what ought to be in its APPs, and most seem to agree that the character of that team is appropriately balanced in its plan approval and monitoring processes – even if I sometimes worry that poor performance in those plans is routinely going unpunished.

    And that’s not exactly rare. The Regulator’s Code seeks to promote “proportionate, consistent and targeted regulatory activity” through the development of “transparent and effective dialogue and understanding” between regulators and those they regulate. Sussex says that throughout the long investigation, OfS refused to meet in person – confirmed by Arif Ahmed in the press briefing.

    The Code also says that regulators should carry out their activities in a way that “supports those they regulate to comply” – and there’s good reasons for that. The original Code actually came from something called the Hampton Report – in 2004’s Budget, Gordon Brown tasked businessman Philip Hampton with reviewing regulatory inspection and enforcement, and it makes the point about example-setting:

    The penalty regime should aim to have an effective deterrent effect on those contemplating illegal activity. Lower penalties result in weak deterrents, and can even leave businesses with a commercial benefit from illegal activity. Lower penalties also require regulators to carry out more inspection, because there are greater incentives for companies to break the law if they think they can escape the regulator’s attention. Higher penalties can, to some extent, improve compliance and reduce the number of inspections required.”

    But the review also noted that regulators were often slow, could be ineffective in targeting persistent offenders, and that the structure of some regulators, particularly local authorities, made effective action difficult. And some of that was about a failure to use risk-based regulation:

    The 1992 book Responsive Regulation, by Ian Ayres and John Braithwaite, was influential in defining an ‘enforcement pyramid’, up which regulators would progress depending on the seriousness of the regulatory risk, and the non-compliance of the regulated business. Ayres and Braithwaite believed that regulatory compliance was best secured by persuasion in the first instance, with inspection, enforcement notices and penalties being used for more risky businesses further up the pyramid.

    The pyramid game

    Responsive Regulation is a cracking book if you’re into that sort of thing. Its pyramid illustrates how regulators can escalate their responses from persuasion to punitive measures based on the behaviour of the regulated entities:

    In one version of the compliance pyramid, four broad categories of client (called archetypes) are defined by their underlying motivational postures:

    1. The disengaged clients who have decided not to comply,
    2. The resistant clients who don’t want to comply,
    3. The captured clients who try to comply, but don’t always succeed, and
    4. The accommodating clients who are willing to do the right thing.

    Sussex has been saying all week that it’s been either 3 or 4, but does seem to have been treated like it’s 1 or 2.

    As such, Responsive Regulation argues that regulators should aim to balance the encouragement of voluntary compliance with the necessity of enforcement – and of course that balance is one of the central themes emerging in the Sussex case, with VC Sacha Roseneil taking to PoliticsHome to argue that:

    …Our experience reflects closely the [Lords’ Industry and Regulators] committee’s observations that it “gives the impression that it is seeking to punish rather than support providers towards compliance, while taking little note of their views.” The OfS has indeed shown itself to be “arbitrary, overly controlling and unnecessarily combative”, to be failing to deliver value for money and is not focusing on the urgent problem of the financial sustainability of the sector.

    At roughly the same time as the Hampton Report, Richard Macrory – one of the leading environmental lawyers of his generation – was tasked by the Cabinet Office to lead a review on regulatory sanctions covering 60 national regulators, as well as local authorities.

    His key principle was that sanctions should aim to change offender behaviour by ensuring future compliance and potentially altering organisational culture. He also argued they should be responsive and appropriate to the offender and issue, ensure proportionality to the offence and harm caused, and act as a deterrent to discourage future non-compliance.

    To get there, he called for regulators to have a published policy for transparency and consistency, to justify their actions annually, and that the calculation of administrative penalties should be clear.

    These are also emerging as key issues in the Sussex case – Roseneil argues that the fine is “wholly disproportionate” and that OfS abandoned, without any explanation, most of its provisional findings originally communicated in 2014.

    The Macory and Hampton reviews went on to influence the UK Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008, codifying the Ayres and Braithwaite Compliance Pyramid into law via the Regulator’s Code. The current version also includes a duty to ensure clear information, guidance and advice is available to help those they regulate meet their responsibilities to comply – and that’s been on my mind too.

    Knowing the rules and expectations

    The Code says that regulators should provide clear, accessible, and concise guidance using appropriate media and plain language for their audience. It says they should consult those they regulate to ensure guidance meets their needs, and create an environment where regulated entities can seek advice without fear of enforcement.

    It also says that advice should be reliable and aimed at supporting compliance, with mechanisms in place for collaboration between regulators. And where multiple regulators are involved, they should consider each other’s advice and resolve disagreements through discussion.

    That’s partly because Hampton had argued that advice should be a central part of a regulators’ function:

    Advice reduces the risk of non-compliance, and the easier the advice is to access, and the more specific the advice is to the business, the more the risk of non-compliance is reduced.

    Hampton argued that regulatory complexity creates an unmet need for advice:

    Advice is needed because the regulatory environment is so complex, but the very complexity of the regulatory environment can cause business owners to give up on regulations and ‘just do their best’.

    He said that regulators should prioritise advice over inspections:

    The review has some concerns that regulators prioritise inspection over advice. Many of the regulators that spoke to the review saw advice as important, but not as a priority area for funding.”

    And he argued that advice builds trust and compliance without excessive enforcement:

    Staff tend to see their role as securing business compliance in the most effective way possible – an approach the review endorses – and in most cases, this means helping business rather than punishing non-compliance.

    If we cast our minds back to 2011, despite the obvious emerging complexities in freedom from speech, OfS had in fact done very little to offer anything resembling advice – either on the Public Interest Governance Principles at stake in the Sussex case, or on the interrelationship between them and issues of EDI and harassment.

    Back in 2018, a board paper had promised, in partnership with the government and other regulators, an interactive event to encourage better understanding of the regulatory landscape – that would bring leaders in the sector together to “showcase projects and initiatives that are tackling these challenges”, experience “knowledge sharing sessions”, and the opportunity for attendees to “raise and discuss pressing issues with peers from across the sector”.

    The event was eventually held – in not very interactive form – in December 2022.

    Reflecting on a previous Joint Committee on Human Rights report, the board paper said that it was “clear that the complexity created by various forms of guidance and regulation is not serving the student interest”, and that OfS could “facilitate better sharing of best practice whilst keeping itself apprised of emerging issues.”

    I’m not aware of any activity to that end by October 2021 – and even though OfS consulted on draft guidance surrounding the “protect” duty last year, it’s been blocking our FOI attempts to see the guidance it was set to issue when implementation was paused ever since, despite us arguing that it would have been helpful for providers to see how it was interpreting the balancing acts we know are often required when looking at all the legislation and case law.

    The board paper also included a response to the JCHR that said it would be helpful to report on free speech prompted by a change in the risk profile in how free speech is upheld. Nothing to that end appeared by 2021 and still hasn’t unless we count a couple of Arif Ahmed speeches.

    Finally, the paper said that it was “not planning to name and shame providers” where free speech had been suppressed, but would publish regulatory action and the reasons for it where there had been a breach of registration condition E2.

    Either there’s been plenty of less serious interventions without any promised signals to the sector, or for all of the sound and fury about the issue in the media, there really haven’t been any cases to write home about other than Sussex since.

    Willing, but ready and able?

    The point about all of that – at least in this piece – is that it’s actually perfectly OK for a regulator to both advise and judge.

    It isn’t so much to evaluate whether the fine or the process has been fair, and it’s not to suggest that the regulator shouldn’t be deploying the “send an example to promote compliance” tactic.

    But it is to say that it’s obvious that those should be used in a properly risk-based context – and where there’s recognised complexity, the very least it should do is offer clear advice. It’s very hard to see how that function has been fulfilled thus far.

    In the OECD paper Reducing the Risk to Policy Failure: Challenges for Regulatory Compliance, regulation is supposed to be about ensuring that those regulated are ready, willing and able to comply:

    • Ready means clients who know what compliance is – and if there’s a knowledge constraint, there’s a duty to educate and exemplify. It’s not been done.
    • Able means clients who are able to comply – and if there’s a capability constraint, there’s a duty to enable and empower. That’s not been done either.
    • Willing means clients who want to comply – and if there’s an attitudinal constraint, there’s a duty to “engage, encourage [and then] enforce”.

    It’s hard to see how “engage” or “encourage” have been done – either by October 2021 or to date.

    And so it does look like an assumption on the part of the regulator – that providers and SUs arguing complexity have been being disingenuous, and so aren’t willing to secure free speech – is what has led to the record fine in the Sussex case.

    If that’s true, evidence-free assumptions of that sort are what will destroy the sort of trust that underpins effective regulation in the student interest.

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  • Resolving the tensions in campus culture requires leadership from within

    Resolving the tensions in campus culture requires leadership from within

    You’ve heard a version of this story before.

    The 16 days against gender-based violence campaign has been running around the world for over 30 years now, and manifestations on campus can include everything from assertiveness and self-defense workshops to panels on violence, discrimination and harassment in student life.

    Back in 2021, students at the oldest university in Poland had put together a programme of activity for the campaign that included a lecture on the criminological aspects of the murders of women from a lecturer in the Department of Criminology.

    But days before she was due to give the talk, the Forensic Psychology Section of the Scientific Association of Psychology Students at Jagiellonian University in Krakow (one of the co-organisers alongside the LGBTQ+ society and the SU) announced that the lecture had been cancelled:

    When inviting Dr. Magdalena Grzyb to give a lecture, we were not aware of the views she represents. We would also like to point out that we absolutely do not agree with the opinions she expresses, and we do not consent to any manifestations of transphobia in the university space.

    The previous year, Grzyb had penned a piece in Kultura Liberalna – a weekly Polish magazine focusing on liberal values, intellectual debate, and cultural analysis – critiquing the acceptance of non-binary and queer identities in liberal and progressive circles, suggesting that prioritising individual self-identification over systemic efforts to deconstruct stereotypes and achieve real gender equality was a problem:

    Does every man, even a serial rapist or a domestic torturer, if he says he feels like a woman, have the right to demand to be placed in a cell with women, often victims of such men? (…) A woman who repairs a dishwasher at home is also non-binary. Heck, a woman who earns more than her husband is also non-binary. A man who irons his clothes and washes the floor with a mop is also non-binary. (…) Do they deserve special treatment and a place in a cell with women because of this?

    A few days later Jerzy Pisuliński, Dean of the Faculty of Law and Administration at Jagiellonian, issued a statement making clear that the lecture would take place after all, on the basis that the university should be a place for “debate on important social problems” and that it “cannot avoid controversial topics”.

    Setting an example

    That was an announcement welcomed by HE minister Przemysław Czarnek, whose conservative and nationalist Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) had only months previously, egged on by the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, proposed an amendment to the Law on Higher Education that sought to tackle wokery and cancel culture:

    I welcome with satisfaction the decision of the Rector of the Jagiellonian University to restore the lecture of Ms. Dr. Magdalena Grzyb. The Jagiellonian University is setting an example.

    A year previous a sociology lecturer at the University of Silesia in Katowice resigned in protest after students accused her of promoting intolerant anti-choice and homophobic views in her classes. The university’s disciplinary official found evidence of intolerance – prompting Czarnek’s predecessor Jarosław Gowin to condemn what he termed “ideological censorship”:

    The Bill will be intended to help the university community and the rector to ensure that these freedoms are not violated, that the university is a temple of freedom of speech, freedom of exchange of views and discussion.

    When it eventually appeared a few months later, it proposed to guarantee academic teachers’ freedoms in teaching, speech, research, and publication; protect the expression of religious, philosophical, or worldview beliefs, ensuring they would not constitute disciplinary offenses; and oblige university rectors to uphold respect for these freedoms, all aimed at guaranteeing an environment of “ideological pluralism” within academic institutions.

    Campaign groups weren’t happy – arguing that student organisations should be able to invite or not invite lecturers to their events:

    …that is their sacred right, just as it is not a restriction of freedom of speech that I or any other person was not invited. Other people may not like it and may criticise this decision.

    Just as in the UK, some argued that the reforms could undermine the independence of academic institutions – allowing government influence over academic discourse and research priorities, and discouraging open discussion and critical analysis on topics that might conflict with the government’s conservative stance.

    Others puzzled over the practical differences between not refusing a speaker and forcing a voluntary student group to go ahead with one even if it didn’t want to – the sort of detail lost in the noise in cases like this.

    But back at Jagiellonian, there was the thorny issue of Ernest Figiel to resolve.

    Enemies of the people

    Figiel, a trans activist student at Jagiellonian had accused Grzyb of being a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, and in the process had called for TERFs to be “thrown into a sack and into a lake”, disposed of “in lime pits” and had praised Stalin’s methods of dealing with “enemies of the people” – which he thought should apply to Grzyb and her ilk.

    And as disciplinary proceedings against Figiel ensued and a counter campaign kicked off, it was down to Beata Kowalska, who in 2020 became the university’s first Advocate [Ombusperson] for Academic Rights and Values, to chart a way through:

    It does not matter who the hate speech comes from. Allegations of hate speech are carefully investigated in the case of any member of the university community. As is well known, hate speech can have disastrous consequences when used publicly, sometimes contrary to the original intentions of the sender… Figiel publicly used polemical statements of a dehumanizing nature against his opponents, using extermination and genocidal metaphors…

    Such statements are unacceptable in the academic community. Trivializing the extermination or using in an allegedly humorous way images of genocide, which Mr. Figiel publicly wished for his opponents, constitute a flagrant transgression of the boundaries of freedom of speech.

    The full statement is excellent – carefully integrating concerns that discrimination against non-heteronormative people had intensified with the need to uphold freedom of speech as a “pillar of democratic debate”. And while that was not a universally popular intervention, it pretty much doused the flames and helped the university community move on. The question is how and why.

    What goes on tour

    Jagiellonian in Krakow and Silesia in Katowice were two of the universities we visited on this year’s Wonkhe SUs January bus tour of students’ unions – which took in the Visegrad countries of Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia and Poland.

    Over the past few years, we’ve been assembling groups of SU officers (and the staff that support them) to meet with students’ unions, guilds, associations across countries in Europe – and we’ve seen any number of fascinating projects, initiatives, buildings, services and schemes that students deliver in the student interest.

    But on the long (and often winding) roads between university towns and cities across Europe, we’ve also been trying to work out what it is that underpins all of the impressive stuff that we’ve seen.

    Much like the other three countries’ systems, Polish higher education’s governance is effectively a communitarian power-sharing arrangement that “combines the preferences of policymakers towards the market model” with the legacy of the “institutionalized, deeply-entrenched, and change-resistant academic self-governance model” that was reintroduced in 1990 after communist rule.

    The Law on Higher Education has an extensive section on student rights – setting out a positive role for students’ unions to deliver training on those rights to students, as well as recognising their role in giving voice to student concerns, and organising activities aimed at the social integration and cultural development of students.

    Built almost entirely on pyramids of faculty-based student involvement that start with summer student integration camps and talks for new students on rights and obligations, we met any number of impressive, unpaid student leaders who were keen to support other students because they themselves had experienced being supported by others.

    The law also provides for state universities to be partially democratically run both at faculty and institutional level – with students given at least 20 per cent of seats and veto power over key decisions like who gets to be Dean or Rector, and what goes into study programmes.

    At Silesia, the SU President – who started his talk with a slide quoting from the law – concluded by turning to the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs to say that “we often argue, but we couldn’t wish for anyone better for the job”. That’s partly because to get elected, she had to command the confidence of those electing her. And it’s partly because him and his colleagues obviously thought they had real power in the process.

    He, like all the other SUs we had met in Poland, had mentioned the Ombudsperson at the university as a key figure that students had the right to access – and as we burned through SIM data between visits, we set about trying to understand why.

    Law 2.0

    In 2018, ruling party PiS had enacted a new Law on Higher Education and Science, commonly known as Law 2.0, to modernize higher education. University councils (as opposed to Senates) were given external stakeholders, funding mechanisms were modernised to promote research excellence, universities were given more flexibility in financial management, and toughened duties were placed on universities to uphold ethical standards, including those related to freedom of speech and debate.

    A handful of academic ombudspeople were already in place at the University of Warsaw, the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the Catholic University in Lublin and the Medical University of Warsaw – but Law 2.0 gave a group of universities the opportunity to integrate democratic governance and student rights and obligations into an optional model charter for universities, Section V of which provided for the appointment of an ombudsman for academic rights and values.

    Jagiellonian’s students and staff were among those who’d spotted a need to be seen to be both integrating and providing leadership on EDI and freedom of speech – and the job spec for their first ombuds oozes a need to command confidence.

    They have to be an academic teacher who has been employed at the university for at least ten years and holds a professor or university professor position. They can’t hold any managerial or governing roles and should be widely respected within the university community, demonstrating strong social sensitivity.

    Candidates can be nominated by various groups, including the Senate, university employees, both the UG and doctoral SUs, and the trade unions. Their job is to monitor and address violations of academic rights and values, provide support to affected parties, mediate disputes, and collaborate with university entities to create a respectful academic environment.

    They investigate reported violations, recommend corrective measures to university bodies, and advocate for affected individuals during proceedings. They also have the authority to advise on initiating disciplinary or mediation processes and can request information or documentation from university bodies as needed. And every year, they submit a comprehensive report to the Senate detailing their activities and cases handled – which is subsequently made publicly available.

    No to parameterization

    This interview with the inaugural postholder Beata Kowalska – a feminist sociologist involved in the Scholars at Risk Network – is inspiring:

    A university is not a place where we collect points and are subjected to parameterization, but rather a community of people who work together. They do not work only individually to build their own careers, the mission of the university is much broader.

    Universities are spaces where academic freedom and equality should flourish. This means identifying solutions, sharing good practices, and creating tools that will support these goals. I plan to hold discussions on topics like climate change and academic integrity. Recently, we even used sociological “teams” during the pandemic lockdown to address social isolation among students.

    One challenge is bridging the gap between academic life and society. Universities must be critical spaces where ideas are debated freely and without fear of discrimination or exclusion. This applies not only to faculty and students but to the broader society they serve.

    In year one, Kowalska’s office handled 236 cases involving staff, students, and doctoral candidates, addressing issues like academic ethics, workplace conditions, and conflict resolution, as well as the promotion of academic values, mediation efforts, and educational programmes to support a culture of respect and dialogue within the university.

    And since then her office and team of mediators have gone on to tackle violations of students’ rights by academics, wider academic values, workplace conditions, unwanted behaviours and harassment, complaints about study organisation, anti-discrimination training and cultural events – as well as collaborating internationally.

    Somehow we know more about how the University of Jagiellonian has been handling disputes between students, staff and the university by using Google Translate on a couple of PDFs than pretty much any university in the UK with their bulletproof PR processes and bland press statements when a row ensues.

    And so successful have the institutional ombudspeople been at commanding confidence that PiS backed off on further reforms – and now, along with announcements on encouraging mergers (federalisation first), financial aid for doctoral students, a plan to build more places in dorms and scholarships for students engaged in running activities for others, last September the new government announced that it would strengthen the powers of student and doctoral student ombuds.

    In December HE minister Dariusz Wieczorek ended up embroiled in some kind of whistleblowing scandal, but you get a real sense that the Donald Tusk-led coalition has students’ concerns at heart:

    According to the Central Statistical Office, there are over a million students in Poland. I really want each of you to have the best possible conditions for learning and pursuing your passions, so that your studies are a chance for you to deepen your knowledge, acquire new skills, but also a time for making friends and comprehensive development. That is why at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education we consistently introduce solutions that will ensure high quality of education at Polish universities, we transfer funds for investments related to the teaching activities of universities, and we also co-finance the construction and modernization of dormitories.

    In addition, a student culture support program will be launched in the first quarter of 2025, aimed at clubs, teams and organizations operating in higher education institutions. I am convinced that it will allow for the activation and integration of the environment, and above all, it will contribute to the development of student culture in Poland.

    Commanding confidence

    As ever on our study tours, back on the bus we tended to conclude that there’s lots to be proud of in the UK – in particular, for all of the issues that present, we figure that our sector’s work on mental health and the progress being made on harassment and sexual misconduct and access and participation really is streets ahead of many other countries’ efforts.

    But when it comes to treating students as real stakeholders, it’s not the size of the SU’s block grant that matters – and when it comes to the tensions between academic freedom and EDI, the pausing of the implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act is less a defeat or victory, and more a reflection of the “jury’s out” position that pretty much everyone has on the sector’s ability to reconcile the tensions in a way that will command real confidence.

    Democracy in universities – real democracy, not events where you can scrawl ideas that consultants ignore on sheets of flipchart paper – is in pretty short supply in a UK sector that has largely abolished it in universities and only really turns to it for a popularity contest for leaders in March in SUs. And universities back home are never wrong – at least not in public.

    If nothing else, what we saw in various forms across the Visegrad group this year was real democracy in action – imperfect, messy, bureaucratic and uncomfortably open, but powerfully symbolic of the sort of society that universities hope their graduates will want to build in the future.

    Back on the academic freedom and freedom of speech issue, the truth is that there have always been and always will be tensions and conflicts – between freedom from harm and freedom to speak, between supporters of Israel and Palestine, between protecting the university and protecting students, between the young keen to be on the right side of history and an older generation defensive of it, and between the role that universities play both critiquing society and being a part of it. Conflicts require resolution.

    Having the confidence to take the national widespread credibility of the OIA and establish local versions of it like that exemplified by Beata Kowalska at Jagiellonian – commanding the confidence of students, staff, management, politicians and the wider public by being somewhere independent where folk can raise and resolve disputes – wouldn’t be a defeat for the UK sector, and nor would it represent a risk.

    It would be a reflection of what higher education in the UK often says it is – an open, reflective, capable and self-critical community of students and staff – but all too often is too defensive and too proud to trust its own people to make it a reality.

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