Equality impact assessment
School/Directorate: Academic Administration (ASSU)
Name of person completing the equality impact assessment: Amanda Hughes
Date of completion: 18th June 2010
What is the name of policy / function / practice / criteria you are equality
impact assessing? Annual Monitoring of Breaches of Assessment Data
Is the policy:
New
Existing
Screening
What is the aim of this policy / function / practice / criteria? What is it intended
to achieve?
The data aims to identify trends and or inequities arising from the application of the
Procedures to be followed in the event of a suspect breach of assessment
regulations.
Who are the main stakeholders?
Staff
Students
Community
In light of the data and evidence you have collected for this equality impact
assessment, does this policy / function / practice / criteria have any relevance
to, or impact on, equality and diversity in the two areas below?
Possibility for discrimination / adverse impact
Opportunities to promote equal opportunities / good
relations
Evidence and data
Please use the space below to discuss the evidence and data you have
collected for this equality impact assessment. This evidence may include
statistics, results of consultations, feedback, external reports etc. There is no set
format for this section; please include any information that is relevant or that you
have collected which you have considered as part of this equality impact assessment.
Discuss how it has enabled you to make your conclusions about any impacts on
equality of what you are assessing.
Please ensure you include feedback where appropriate on the policy / function /
practice / criteria from the three staff forums: Race Equality, Respect Sexual
Orientation, and N-Able Disabled Staff Group. You can obtain further guidance and
details on the staff forums from the Equality Unit.
The new policy has been operational for 18 months. Considerable work has been
done by the University and by the Student Union to raise awareness of the
consequences of academic misconduct and to provide support and guidance in
relation to appropriate referencing techniques. Where cases of poor academic
practice are identified, students are referred for assistance to the Learner
Development Unit. Nevertheless, during 2009 392 cases of academic misconduct
were investigated by the University. This is a rise of 53% on the 2008 total of 256
cases.
During 2009 Schools dealt with 170 first and foundation year breach cases; 222
cases of students at higher levels of study were dealt with at University level. Of the
total allegations made 302 were proven, 77% of the allegations made. Overall, 2.1%
of the student population of the University of Bradford were found accountable for
cases of academic misconduct. The highest proportion of allegations proven came
from second year students, 21% (3.7% of the student population) with year three
students comprising 14% (2.3% of the student population). Postgraduate student
breaches accounted for 14% of the allegations made, 1.2% of the PG student
population.
Gender: 42% of the allegations made were against female students, 32.4% were
found. 58% of the allegatons made were against male students, 45% were found.
Age: A disproportionate number of young students are found to have committed a
breach of assessment regulations (49% young proven against 28% mature proven).
Ethnicity: A disproportionately high number of BME students are found to have
committed a breach of assessment regulations. Of the total allegations made BME
students comprised 54%; 43% of these cases were proven.
Of the allegations made, white students (including those from EU countries)
comprised 14%; 11% of which were proven.
As far as is discernable from the HESA categories, overseas students from all other
ethnic categories comprised 33% of the allegations; 24% of which were proven.
Disability: The disability data is statistically unrepresentative as the figures are (a)
very low and (b) do not reflect specific areas of disability, for example dyslexia. The
latter omission will be rectified in the collection of data for 2011.
Type of Academic Misconduct: The most common form of misconduct was
plagiarism, either from external sources or in the form of collaboration between
students; these accounted for 274 (90%) of the proven cases.
Penalties: The most serious penalty applied by Investigating Deans was the award of
credit for a repeat submission without the benefit of a module mark. Of the 302
students to whom penalties were applied, 134 (44%) were subject to this penalty
with a further 81 (27%) permitted to resubmit for a maximum module mark of 35%.
Two people were permanently excluded from the University.
Equality impact
Based on your findings presented in the section above, please tick the
appropriate boxes below and summarise your reasons where appropriate:
Positive impact/
opportunities
Negative /
adverse
impact
No impact
Unknown
Reasons
and
evidence
Race
Gender
Disability
Sexual
orientation
Religion or
belief
Age
If you have identified any negative or adverse impact, can this be justified?
Yes
No
If you have answered yes, please explain how:
The impact is neither negative nor adverse in terms of the actual breaches policy.
The data points to particular categories of student who do not obey the regulations of
the University. Other areas of policy and teachign support need to be addressed in
order to address this issue.
What action will you take to reduce the negative or adverse impacts?
Changes to the policy / function / practice / criteria
Changes to the method of implementation
Replacing the policy / function / practice / criteria
Please discuss further:
None of the actions suggested above are applicable to the issues raised by the data.
Breaches
Gender
There appears to be no significant effect of gender on breaches except that males
are more likely to be accused. 60% of all cases are male students despite a gender
ratio in the student population being close to 50:50, However, the number of cases
not proven and, consequently the number of cases proven mirrors this ratio
suggesting there is no bias
Ethnicity
A comparison has been carried out between the percentage of allegations of a
breach of the assessment regulations by ethnic grouping compared with the
percentage of student who declare themselves as belong to that ethnic group.
A comparison has also been made of the percentage proven to not proven
allegations of a breach of the assessment regulations for each of the ethnic groups.
Initial examination of the data gives cause for concern. 40% of all allegations are
levelled against Asian or Asian British Pakistani students, who only make up only 23%
of the student body. This compares with white students, who make up 45% of the
student body but have only 14% of the allegations levelled against them. Whilst this
pattern is true for several ethnic groups, most noticeablely Chinese students, it does
not hold for all ethnic groups, particularly Asian or Asian British Indian. This suggests
that further data analysis is required to get a clearer understanding what the data is
telling us.
An effective way of doing is to look at the ratio of proven (expressed as a percentage
of the total proven decisions) to not proven (expressed as a percentage of the total
not proven decisions) allegations. In a system that is not discriminatory then one
would expect that these two percentages should be about the same regardless of
ethnicity. If one group is being unfairly accused then there should be a greater
proportion of not proven decisions when compared with the proven decisions, If the
investigative process is biased then one would expect an excess of proven
allegations. If, however, the data for the ethnic groups are pooled then the figures
are 85:86 for the ethnic minority group students and 14:13 for the white students.
This leaves us with a conundrum; as an ethnic minority student you are 6 times more
likely to be accused of breaching the regulations with little evidence to support the
view that any part of the process is discriminatory. It should be borne in mind that
over 80% of the breaches are for plagiarism so the effects we see are due to
plagiarism. There is ample evidence that avoiding plagiarism is something in which
students need to be schooled. Furthermore there are cultural differences in the
understanding of what constitutes plagiarism. This would suggest that the solution to
the high incidence of plagiarism amongst ethnic minorities is an educational one
rather than the reformation of discriminatory processes. This fits with the policies that
Learning and Teaching Committee has been developing over the last year. We have
also introduced a plagiarism awareness course as either a sole or component part of
a penalty for all first offenders. 93%% of the penalties applied included the
plagiarism awareness course suggesting that vast majority of individual only commit
plagiarism once and appear not to reoffend. These data provide strong support for
the view the plagiarism is usually the result of ignorance rather than a deliberate
attempt to cheat. A further implication of this is that an education based approach to
preventing plagiarism is likely to be effective. As a University we should not be
surprised by this and should be prepared to embrace the approach that follows from
this.
Action Planning
1)
All courses should, early in semester 1 year 1 have a session organised in
conjunction with the LDU and library. The aim should be to educate students as to
what is and isn’t plagiarism in a supportive way rather than emphasise the
consequences of committing plagiarism. This will be arranged by Schools
commencing September 2011.
2)
Programs of staff development which emphasis cultural differences should be
made available. The Director of Learing and Teaching will liaise with Staff
Development on this matter with a view to the introduction of such courses as soon
as possible.
3)
In future years the data set look at the number of repeat offenders as this will
give an indication of the wilful cheat as opposed to the ignorant. This information will
be available as part of the 2010 Annual Monitoring Exercise
4)
Analysis of the effectiveness of the plagiarism awareness program in
preventing recidivism should be undertaken. This information will be available as
part of the 2010 Annual Monitoring Excercise.
Action planning:
Action required
By whom
Date for completion
Publicising and reporting
The Equality Unit will work with you to ensure this equality impact assessment is
adapted for publication on the University website.
Please use the space below to discuss how else you want to make the results
of this equality impact assessment more widely known. This might include
presenting it at School or Directorate forums, committee meetings etc, or sending it
to those who were consulted; you may have your own internal channels of
communication you want to use.
Monitoring and review
When will you review this equality impact assessment?
The 2010 data will be subject to EIA in May/June 2011
Who will be responsible for the review?
The Complaints and Appeals Officer and the Director of Teaching and Learning
How will you monitor the policy / function / practice / criteria in the meantime?
This might include collecting periodic feedback, checking statistics periodically etc.
There is no requirement for another full equality impact assessment at this stage.
The policy itself will be subject to continuous monitoring against the rules published
by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator.
Approval
Dean / Director of School / Director signature:
Date:
Date sent to Equality Unit: