One of the key outputs of the Department for Education’s higher education mental health implementation taskforce has been published – some guidance on and case studies surrounding compassionate communication in higher education.
The strand of work emerged from tragic cases like this one highlighted by Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn, Con) at the Westminster Hall debate on Duty of Care in July 2023:
Mared Foulkes from Menai Bridge was in her second year of studying pharmacy at Cardiff University when she received an automated email from the university, hours before her death, saying that she had failed her exams and would not be moving on to her third year. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is completely unacceptable?
In the debate, then universities minister Robert Halfon said that higher education needed to get behind a university student “commitment” on more personalised and compassionate academic processes:
…so that students are dealt with sensitively when they face course dismissal or receive difficult assignment results. The LEARN Network has raised the importance of that issue, and has asked for students to be treated fairly. Under the commitment, providers would review their procedures to ensure that the circumstances of individual students are considered, including their mental health.
The guidance itself sets out standards of practice for higher education providers in England – the expectation is that it will be considered when updating policies and procedures and refreshing student charters. It may be taken into consideration by the OIA when reviewing student complaints about higher education providers in England.
It’s “owned” by the Academic Registrars’ Council (ARC), the material is hosted by the HE Student Support Champion (Nottingham Trent VC Edward Peck) on ARC’s behalf, and there are five aspects to the commitment:
- The adoption of a “culture of kindness” and incorporating it into student-facing policies, processes, and communications;
- “Mindful communications” which are clear, empathetic, action-focused, and supportive;
- Timely communications ensuring that careful consideration has been given to both delivery and timings, enabling students to access advice and support when they most need it;
- Inclusivity by actively identifying and addressing barriers to engagement, as well as carefully considering the impact of processes and communications on all student groups;
- The principle of reflection and continuous Improvement by dedicating time to review challenges and successes in delivering student-facing policies, processes and communications with compassion and empathy.
Both Halfon and the first meeting of the taskforce in July 2023 set the strand up as follows:
HE providers need to consider the design of their policies and procedures, and related communication around academic processes, such as module failure, poor exam results and drop-outs with students.
It’s perhaps disappointing that the document seems to be mainly about compassionate communications, rather than compassionate processes – the need to change the way things are done as well as how those things are communicated does seem to have got a little lost along the way. And whatever else has happened, it’s evidently not been formally adopted in Wales – ironic given the case highlighted in the Westminster Hall debate.
It’s nevertheless helpful – although it would probably be fair to put much of the material firmly in the “good in principle” but “may well need further discussion with some colleagues” box of change management in HE.
Typically trusting?
In the kindness section, for example, the expectation is that students are “typically trusted in the first instance” and, where evidence is required, the potential impact of providing evidence has been considered. You can see how all sorts of both formal processes and informal conversations might need to change based on where a given actor’s perceptions are of particular groups of students and whether they’re to be trusted – or should have been admitted in the first place.
In the mindful comms section, providers are advised that encountering and overcoming difficulties is seen as being a normal part of student life, but that careful consideration should be given to processes or communications that could lead to negative feelings and worries. Nothing wrong with attempting to strike that balance – but again, understanding where that balance is in practice, and how it might have changed for a much more anxious student body, is likely to need some careful handling.
Requiring less debate, but no less resource, is a line on messaging that could have a “seriously negative or life-changing impact” – which the guidance says should [always] be delivered in person. There’s some cause for concern over whether there’s real understanding of the potential impact of, say, a fail grade – I can hear the muttering now (and see the associated Spectator article) about the old “public pass lists” in Oxbridge colleges.
And while I can make the case for the more dramatic end of finance/immigration-related comms to be delivered in person, I can also hear some bemoaning that some students will only engage in person if some written comms contain threat or drama.
There is plenty in the document to trigger off a set of conversations inside academic departments and professional services teams – although I’d caution that conversations that don’t roll their sleeves up and get students in the room to critique exhibits A, B and C may well misjudge where the fine lines are in what are, by definition, a set of broad principles.
Implementing in practise
For me, while the guidance references “academic and behavioural expectations”, it would be helpful if there was clarity that it covers financial and immigration-related communications – a key source of risk for often isolated international international students in an unfamiliar and often unforgiving culture. Taskforce minutes from April suggest that the Academic Registrars Council (ARC) had questions about areas beyond their members’ remit – it will be important to draw in a broad section of those who talk to students when implemented locally.
Many of the student leaders and SU advice staff I’ve discussed the concept with wanted to see reference to the need to signpost to sources of independent support to students when they get bad news or are accused of something – something most SUs have been arguing for for years and the OIA includes in its good practice framework. And it could also be strengthened by making clear to students what their rights are when they receive distressing or potentially life-altering news – students’ own agency is surely a key component of compassion.
Something else that student leaders and advice staff tell me is a real problem is not just policies and comms, but backlogs within them. Students, for example, not being told until September that they are not entitled to progress to the following year is a problem that is partly about resists and appeals, and partly about backlogs and capacity. Either way, given many students are on the hook for housing by then, it’s not forgivable. Compassionate comms do require compassionate systems.
It will also be important to focus in on university marketing – and the way in which positive pictures painted of the student experience can clash with the brutal realities of participation in 2024. The journey to compassionate communication is surely as much about what is not said as it is what is said.
There was a striking moment at our festival of HE when one of the student contributors discussed the impact of emailing their academic advisor, only to get a response several weeks later. Doubtless that staff member was snowed under – but if universities are to set an expectation that help of that sort can come via an email to an academic, setting down reasonable timeframes for responses is surely a precursor for compassion. And if they can’t be met, the right thing to do is surface that, rather than leave students fretting.
Throughout the taskforce process, minutes record suggestions that mechanisms should be in place such that a university will set out with clarity its commitment over the commitment to students – partly to enable students to hold institutions accountable for non-compliance. I see some worrying about promises “the centre” can’t be sure will be kept – but this sort of stuff is rarely delivered via a PDF in the inbox, and without the vast resources required to (re)train everyone that sends stuff to students, it’s enabling students and their reps to point out that something could have been said in a more compassionate (or timely) way that will drive the detail of the change.
There’s also something about pace. November’s minutes recorded that the principles should be implemented “as and when communications and processes come up for review” to ensure that “this is not seen as an additional ask of the sector” even if “it may take 2-3 years to be fully implemented.”
Minutes may not have fully recorded the compassion in the conversation, but that does feel like a clash, between the urgency and scale which bereaved families would like to see, and the general pace of change in the sector – a sector which often talks with pride about taking teaching online over one weekend in the spring of 2020. If this will all take time, the time to start is probably now.
Something culture something strategy breakfast
Overall what strikes me is a contribution in December’s taskforce minutes that said “communication tone reflects provider culture”. During Covid, the differences between those who adopted “no detriment” policies early and enthusiastically, and those who reluctantly did so once everyone else had, were vivid.
Those who recognised the cost of living crisis early did so with empathy and understanding – others held out on hosting food banks for fear of looking like the sort of place where student poverty might exist.
In organisations with widely distributed responsibilities for communicating with students, both inside universities and individual departments, the extent to which the situation of burdened, ambitious, admitted students is accepted, or understood, or acted on with empathy can vary hugely – and that impacts the comms.
Compassion is dependent upon understanding, empathy, and awareness of others’ suffering. It requires recognition of human experiences, emotional connection, and a willingness to alleviate distress. It thrives in environments of trust, care, and mutual respect. If where students study or where staff work don’t feel like those sorts of environments, the wording of emails or even the personal communication of results is like a bad landlord painting over the mould.
It also takes time – something in short supply for both staff and students as the efficiency realties of a mass higher education system that the taxpayer doesn’t want to fund bite harder and harder.
The guidance can and should be put to many uses, but ultimately this was a piece of work that was inspired by the erroneous communication of summative failure.
Outside of what, in the Cardiff case, was a tragic mistake in the accuracy of the comms, while there is ample research on why or how students learn and attain, there’s little on the anxieties or stakes associated with failure, or the impact of it – on groups of students who, for health or precarity reasons, may not be able to straightforwardly chalk it up as something to learn from. The more the sector seeks to understand how high those stakes are for some these days the better.
