Safeguarding the Student Experience

This ProtectED Reflections event is the first in a series of webinars on the theme 'Safeguarding the Student Experience'. These will explore what safeguarding the student experience really means for universities and HE professionals.

Student safety and wellbeing is a key driver for student recruitment and retention — especially for international students. However, media reports have highlighted problems with the processes employed by universities to deal with sexual misconduct complaints.

Such problems relate to complaints processes around both student on student incidents and staff on student incidents. With regard to the latter, research suggests that universities' response to staff sexual misconduct often involves HEIs “making it up as they go along”.

UK universities often lack specific procedures for addressing student complaints about staff sexual misconduct. It is clear that change is urgently needed to address this.

This ProtectED Reflections event will explore and discuss university policies, processes and practice in this area.

We are very pleased to welcome our speaker for this event:

• Georgina Calvert-Lee, Senior Counsel at McAllister Olivarius and co-author with the 1752 Group of the guidance publication Sector Guidance to Address Staff Sexual Misconduct in UK Higher Education (which can be downloaded here).

Georgina will be interviewed by Professor Caroline Davey, one of the founders and Directors of ProtectED.

Caroline will be discussing with Georgina her experience in this area and the development of the 1752 guidance document. They will discuss examples of poor practice, such as the overuse of confidentiality clauses (NDAs) by universities in sexual harassment settlements, and what changes Georgina envisions for improved student and staff support provision.

We look forward to you joining us.