The Governance of Complaints in UK Higher Education: Critically Examining ‘Remedies’ for Staff Sexual Misconduct

Date01 February 2022
DOI10.1177/09646639211002243
Published date01 February 2022
AuthorTiffany Page,Anna Bull
Subject MatterArticles
Article
The Governance of
Complaints in UK Higher
Education: Critically
Examining ‘Remedies’ for
Staff Sexual Misconduct
Anna Bull
University of Portsmouth, UK
Tiffany Page
University College London, UK
Abstract
Complaints processes and their governance in UK higher education (HE) have received
little critical scrutiny, despite their expanded role under the increasing marketisation of
HE. This article draws on interviews with studentswho attempted to make complaints of
staff sexual misconduct to their HE institution. It outlines four groups among the inter-
viewees according to the ‘remedy’ that they obtained, describing how most interviewees
could not access the services of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher
Education in England as they could not complete internal institutional complaints pro-
cesses. The failureof most complainants to obtain remedy, andthe difficult experiences of
those who did, revealsthe inadequacies of using an individualist, consumer-oriented model
for addressing discrimination complaints in HE. The article also contributes to discussions
of justice for sexual violence survivors, suggesting that community-oriented remedies are
needed alongside formal administrative justice processes to address power-based sexual
misconduct in institutions.
Keywords
Complaints, governance, higher education, justice, staff sexual misconduct, students
Corresponding author:
Anna Bull, School of Education and Sociology, University of Portsmouth, St George’s Building, 141 High St,
Portsmouth PO1 2HY, UK.
Email: anna.bull@port.ac.uk
Social & Legal Studies
ªThe Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/09646639211002243
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2022, Vol. 31(1) 27–49
Introduction
Complaints processes in UK higher education (HE) have received little attention within
academic research, despite recent public scrutiny (Lee and Kennelly, 2019; Lee and
West, 2019), and their governance and regulation across the sector has received even less
consideration. In England and Wales, the main body that oversees student complaints is
the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA), the independent
student complaints scheme for England and Wales. Nevertheless, the OIA receives very
few complaints about sexual misconduct or indeed about issues relating to discrimina-
tion more generally (Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, 2019a,
2020a). This is not because staff sexual misconduct is a rare occurrence; around 10%of
all women postgraduate students are subjected to this (Cantor et al., 2019: xiii), and of
those who report, most are dissatisfied with how their higher education institution (HEI)
handled the issue (National Union of Students, 2018).
There is, therefore, a gap between what we know about the number of students who
are subject to sexual misconduct, the number who report to their institution, and the
number who access the OIA’s services. It is possible that the low numbers of students
going to the OIA indicate that they are satisfied with internal complaints processes and
are receiving appropriate ‘remedies’ for their complaint from their institution. However,
as outlined below, existing research evidence suggests this is not the case. Therefore the
question remains: why are students not accessing the service of the OIA? Exploring this
issue requires looking into the effectiveness of the regulatory framework for complaints
within UK HE for addressing discrimination and harassment, and as complaints mechan-
isms are part of consumer protections for students, these discussions can shed light on the
extent of students’ power as consumers of HE. More widely, examining complaints
processes can also illuminate the question of justice looks like for sexual violence
survivors. This article extends ongoing discussions in this area into administrative justice
spaces within institutions, while opening up discussions of what appropriate ‘remedies’
might look like for complaints relating to staff sexual misconduct.
1
In order to explore this issue, the article draws on interviews with 14 students and 1
early career researcher who reported or disclosed staff sexual misconduct to their UK
HEIs between 2010 and 2017 to outline the remedies that were available to them and to
analyse this in relation to sector policy and guidance. This study forms part of a larger
body of work on staff sexual misconduct in HE (Bull and Page, 2021; Bull and Rye,
2018; Bull et al., 2019, 2020; National Union of Students, 2018; Page et al., 2019). While
the article is relevant to any jurisdi ction with a sector-wide ombuds framework for
overseeing student complaints such as Australia or many countries in Europe, the empiri-
cal data focuses on England. Its main contribution is to provide a critical overview of
complaints processes within HE in England and to reveal the extent to which this system
is effective in providing remedy for staff sexual misconduct, in this way contributing to
debates on what justice could look like for victim-survivors of power-based sexual
misconduct within institutions.
The article first introduces this discussion of justice for sexual misconduct victim-
survivors, then gives a brief overview of the current sector landscape for student com-
plaints in UK HE, contextualising this internationally, before introducing the specific
28 Social & Legal Studies 31(1)

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