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
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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.Show this thread -
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.Show this thread -
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.
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You can listen to the full
#TheNextEpisode podcast investigation here on@BBCSounds —https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0831fc8 …Show this thread -
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”.Show this thread -
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.Show this thread -
Huge team effort across all platforms — big thanks to
@SamBonham@nrothers for pod,@robtaylortv for filming,@ChrisGibsonNews,@PatrickClahane and@Saraal_tech for edits
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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.
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Oh, and if you want the
on your uni...happy to share.Show this thread -
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This is Charlotte — not her real name’s — story:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-51466281/university-expulsion-threat-for-crying-over-sexual-assault …
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Nice to see
@bustle covering our investigation:https://www.bustle.com/p/a-third-of-uk-universities-are-silencing-sexual-assault-complaints-with-ndas-report-finds-21796512 …Show this thread -
Breakdown of the BBC's data here -- Durham and Sunderland:https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/durham-sunderland-university-non-disclosure-17735752 …
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@DurhamStudentsU@sunderlandsu@DerbyUnion@WolvesSU@TheUnionMMU@ExeterGuild@buckssu@WarwickSU@BCUSU — you might want to share among your networks
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@UniOfHull is now the only university to have not responded to my freedom of information request. Said it could “neither confirm nor deny”. https://twitter.com/sarahmarieds/status/1226879470717546496?s=21 …https://twitter.com/SarahMarieDS/status/1226879470717546496 …
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Great feature by
@Dazed , exploring the content we discussed in the#TheNextEpisode pod:https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/47938/1/students-speak-out-on-how-their-universities-used-ndas-to-silence-them …Show this thread
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