TW: rape, assault
Months in the making and the most important @BBCNews investigation I’ve done. These students were terrified to speak out — at the risk of being sued. One student is currently under a formal threat of expulsion if she goes public. bbc.com/news/uk-514476…
Months in the making and the most important @BBCNews investigation I’ve done. These students were terrified to speak out — at the risk of being sued. One student is currently under a formal threat of expulsion if she goes public. bbc.com/news/uk-514476…
Nearly 1/3 of UK unis have used #NDAs for student complaints since 2016— including false advertising of courses and facilities, lack of disability support, poor teaching and handling of sexual assault allegations — which students say has been even more traumatic than their attack
Around 300 students have signed NDAs across 45 #universities — which have paid out more than £1.3m. One payout alone was at least £40k. And this is a big underestimate — unis haven’t been fully transparent and some of our students aren’t even included in those numbers.
Some unis had received dozens of false advertising allegations — paying out all of them — and the @officestudents , which has powers to investigate, suggested this could breach fair completion rules. Students have a right to know before they sign up to courses.
What’s more concerning is that some of these students aren’t receiving legal advice before signing — or even money — and with a written contract saying you’ll be expelled if you speak out, lawyers say that’s a huge abuse of power from unis.
You can listen to the full #TheNextEpisode podcast investigation here on @BBCSounds — bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0…
Worth adding using NDAs isn’t common practice. All sector bodies advise against it. The @oiahe said it was innapropriate. The @educationgovuk told us it was “unacceptable” — unis have a duty of care to students to ensure they’re “safe and inclusive environments”.
Just been on @BBCr4today, doing lives across the day, check out our digital videos, which I’ll link below, and full story coming up on @VictoriaLIVE at 10am.
Huge team effort across all platforms — big thanks to @SamBonham @nrothers for pod, @robtaylortv for filming, @ChrisGibsonNews, @PatrickClahane and @Saraal_tech for edits 👌🏽
DMs always open and you can email me at rianna.croxford@bbc.co.uk if you’ve been affected and want to get in touch — like so many are already.
Oh, and if you want the ☕️ on your uni...happy to share.
One more university has just emailed to confirm it uses NDAs on students after I appealed via the ICO. So that’s now a third of universities exactly.
@bustle Breakdown of the BBC's data here -- Durham and Sunderland:
chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-eas…
chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-eas…
@DurhamStudentsU @sunderlandsu @DerbyUnion @WolvesSU @TheUnionMMU @ExeterGuild @buckssu @WarwickSU @BCUSU — you might want to share among your networks ☝🏼
@UniOfHull is now the only university to have not responded to my freedom of information request. Said it could “neither confirm nor deny”.
