Prevent and address harassment and sexual misconduct

Detrimental or favourable treatment

These steps should protect students in personal relationships with staff against detrimental or favourable treatment. Examples of this sort of treatment might include:

• not receiving a positive review or reference, or receiving a negative review or reference
• unfavourable treatment in academic assessments, for example, less access to support or feedback, less opportunity for extensions, lower grades or marks
• not receiving funding for research
• restricting access to resources
• restricting participation in aspects of a student’s education
• receiving a positive review or reference
• favourable treatment on academic assessments, for example greater access to support or feedback, more opportunity for extensions, higher grades or marks
• being promised access to funding and resources
• being promised introductions to others who could advance their academic or professional career.

Options for complying

A ban on intimate personal relationships is a step that a provider could take to achieve this. But we recognise that this may not be appropriate in all circumstances.

This means our regulation gives providers the discretion to consider their context and take measures suited to their circumstances and their students.

Some examples of what a provider could do to protect its students from conflicts of interest or abuse of power are:

• explicitly discouraging intimate personal relationships between relevant staff members and students
• raising awareness among students of behaviour that could amount to abuse of power, coercion, or sexual and/or romantic advances
• empowering students to refuse and report inappropriate behaviours from staff and providing information on where they can access support
• ensuring staff receive training about appropriate professional boundaries.

If a provider chooses not to ban intimate personal relationships or adopts a ban with some exemptions, some examples of how it could manage conflicts of interest or abuse of power are:

• requiring staff to disclose intimate personal relationships with students when they occur and maintaining a record of them
• managing the academic and/or professional interaction between a member of staff and a student where they are in a relationship. This could mean:
  • making sure that the student experiences no unfair advantage or disadvantage in assessment, references or academic opportunities, due to their intimate personal relationship with a staff member
  • if the student needs to report harassment or sexual misconduct this reporting process does not involve the member of staff.

Deciding what steps to take

To identify what steps it needs to take, a provider could consider the following:

• gathering and analysing evidence of the prevalence of relationships between staff and students at the provider
• assessing the volume, seriousness and nature of complaints made about relationships between staff and students
• assessing the risk of harassment and/or sexual misconduct occurring as a result of the actual or potential abuse of power and conflicts of interest that can arise from these relationships between staff and students
• consulting with the provider’s students to ensure that their views, interests and needs are taken into account.

Definitions