Report and Support fourth report

By providing a facility for everyone in our community to raise concerns about the behaviour, safety and wellbeing of others, Report + Support contributes to the refreshed Diverse St Andrews key objectives of creating a culture of inclusivity, diversity, equality and safety for students, staff and visitors.

In nurturing a compassionate and inclusive community, we acknowledge that members of our community have been subjected to harassment, discrimination, sexual violence, and bullying behaviours. Whilst these behaviours are evident in all facets of society, this report is one aspect of a more comprehensive range of work to address these issues.

Recognising that positive wellbeing relies on an equity of access to assistance, Report + Support provides an online avenue for people to disclose incidents of unacceptable behaviour and wellbeing concerns, anonymously or with contact details.

The University of St Andrews launched Report + Support in November 2020. This report covers the academic year – between 1 August 2023 and 31 July 2024.

Key findings for 2023-2024

• 315 disclosures were submitted via Report + Support, a 57.5% increase from 2022-2023, when 200 disclosures were made. Most of this increase originated from current students, at 247, compared to 152 in 2022-2023. Disclosures from staff, at 34, are comparable to 2022-2023 at 32.
• There was an increase in Report + Support disclosures of all incident types apart from 'Drink spiking' and 'Mental health and wellbeing'. The biggest increase in disclosures was 'Antisocial behaviour', (56 to 115), 'Harassment' (56 to 105), and ‘Bullying’ (58 to 85).
• The most common incident type across all disclosures was 'Antisocial behaviour', with 115 disclosures. This is more than double the number of 'Antisocial behaviour' disclosures in 2022-2023. The majority of these were raised by students (95 cases, increased from 44 in 2022-2023). A noise-related incident accounted for 21.7% (25) of all 'Antisocial behaviour' disclosures.
• The majority (54.0%) of disclosures were made anonymously in 2023-2024, in contrast to 41.5% in 2022-2023.
• Both staff and students chose 'I want the University to have this information' as the most common reason to be anonymous. There was an 89.2% increase (from 37 in 2022-2023 to 70 in 2023-2024) in the numbers of students who chose ‘I’m worried about the repercussion for me or others.’
• 'Safeguarding concern' was the incident type with the highest proportion of Anonymous disclosures at 68.8%.
• Disclosures referencing Antisemitism increased to 5.7% (20 incidents), up from 0.5% (1 incident) in 2022-2023. Disclosures referencing Islamophobia increased from 0 incidents in 2022-2023 to 18 incidents (5.1% of all incidents) in 2023-2024.
• Online incidents increased by 92.0% with 48 disclosures in 2023-2024, from 25 in 2022-2023.

Report + Support provides an online and integrated option for students, staff, and members of our community, to disclose negative behaviour and wellbeing concerns. An important feature of Report + Support is that it provides the choice to disclose either with contact details, or anonymously. Report + Support contains comprehensive and bespoke support pages covering categories from Antisocial behaviour to Sexual assault and rape.

Disclosures made using Report + Support are impartially and non-judgmentally reviewed by expert practitioners in Student Services, Student Conduct, Human Resources (HR) and/or Information Assurance and Governance. They endeavour to help and respond to all, although response is necessarily limited by the amount of information provided in the disclosure. Practitioners listen to more fully understand the experiences disclosed and utilise the range of support and investigative processes available. The outcome section provides more information about how staff responded to disclosures.

In our previous Report + Support third report (2022-2023) we committed to progressing a series of strategic actions, aimed at enhancing the platform’s accessibility, responsiveness, and trustworthiness, to ensure Report + Support is meeting the needs of our community. This section outlines the progress made on those commitments throughout the 2023–24 academic year.

Improving communication channels for disclosers. Student and staff disclosing anonymously can now communicate with our expert practitioners using a secure, anonymous messaging facility. We hope that this will encourage students and staff disclosing anonymously to remain in contact, so that support can be offered, updates given and relevant information shared about the disclosed incident.

This new facility was launched on 11th November 2024.  People who submit anonymous disclosures are given the option of ‘opting in’ to anonymous messaging.  Those who opt in receive an identification code that links with their disclosure, allowing them, at any time, to connect with colleagues in Student Services, Student Conduct or HR and message with any queries they may have.  These expert staff practitioners are notified of the message waiting and they can reply directly through the messaging application, thus the disclosing party remains anonymous.

Whilst this is not an instant messaging service, messages will be responded to as soon as possible and within three working days.

More information can be found on how the messaging works.

We value feedback on the messaging system itself and on the support articles provided by using the online form in the Report+ Support system, emailing reportandsupport@st-andrews.ac.uk or by attending the annual staff or student fora.

• Building trust in the platform. To better understand student and staff hesitance and reservations about making a disclosure, we brought together expert practitioners from across Student Services, Student Conduct and Human Resources to explore how reports are responded to and outcomes fed back. A working group has also been established to review ways of building trust in reporting to the University.
• Better representing our diverse University population. Ethnicity categories have been updated, so that they now include Jewish as an option.
• Raising awareness through campaigns. Students and staff have been provided with campaign materials to raise awareness of inappropriate behaviours and a communication strategy is being further developed.
• Voicing lived experience. We included references to antisemitism and Islamophobia in this report, by conducting a manual search of all disclosures. Antisemitism and Islamophobia have not been added as new incident types on the disclosure form at this stage. A discussion paper, on definitions of antisemitism and Islamophobia, and how these are operationalised, has been produced by EDI in the University, reviewing approaches in other UK Higher Education Institutions and published research. A subsequent webpage will help inform decisions around how we articulate antisemitism and Islamophobia within Report + Support in future. 

How many disclosures were made in 2023-2024?

In 2023-2024, there was a total of 315 disclosures made via Report + Support. This is a 57.5% increase on numbers from 2022-2023 (200 disclosures).

Key drivers for this increase include:

1. Increased awareness and use of the platform: The Report + Support platform has been actively imbedded into University processes and student support guides.
2. External events: The spike in disclosures referencing antisemitism (1 reference in 2022-2023 to 20 references in 2023-2024) and Islamophobia (0 references in 2022-2023 to 18 references in 2023-2024) in October and November 2023 followed the Hamas attack on Israel and the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war.

Figure 1, Disclosures to Report + Support

When are disclosures being made?

The numbers of disclosures were higher in 2023-2024 than in 2022-2023 for every month except from April, May and June. The highest number of disclosures in 2023-2024 occurred in October and November (56 and 76 disclosures respectfully). The majority (80.5%) of disclosures referencing antisemitism or Islamophobia occurred in these months in 2023-2024 (17 in October and 13 in  November).

Figure 2, Disclosures to Report + Support by month

Who is making the disclosures?

Disclosures are made by students, staff and other members of the community. Following a drop between 2021-22 and 2022-2023, there was a substantial increase in the number of disclosures reported by students in 2023-2024, from 152 in 2022-2023 to 247 in 2023-2024. Disclosures from staff have risen slightly, from 32 in 2022-2023 to 34 in 2023-2024.

Figure 3, Disclosures to Report + Support

Student disclosures were highest during the main teaching period in October and November, and in smaller numbers, in February and March. The peak in October / November is higher than in previous years.

Figure 4, Student disclosures to Report + Support by month

The numbers of disclosures by staff, making up 10.8% of all disclosures (34), are too small to show any discernible pattern over the year.

How are people using Report + Support?

Disclosures are made both anonymously and with contact details. In contrast to previous years, many disclosures were made anonymously in 2023-2024 (170 anonymous and 145 named).

Figure 5, Disclosures to Report + Support by anonymous or named

Both students and staff made more anonymous disclosures this year, with 53.4% of students and 58.8% of staff choosing to remain anonymous. We are working to understand why the number of anonymous disclosures has increased. The new Anonymous Messaging feature will enable disclosers to engage with a member of Student Services, Student Conduct and Human Resources to improve access to support.

Figure 6, Student disclosures to Report and Support anonymous or named

Figure 7, Staff disclosures to Report and Support anonymous or named

What were the reasons for anonymity?

When asked, one or more of the following options can be chosen:

Figure 8, Percentage of anonymous disclosures by reason

The most common reason for student anonymous disclosure was 'I want the University to have this information' (95), followed by 'I am worried about the repercussion for me or others' (70). There was a five-fold increase (from 7 in 2022-2023 to 42 in 2023-2024) in anonymous disclosures with the reason 'I have reported in the past and nothing happened'.

Both staff and students chose 'I want the University to have this information' as the most common reason to be anonymous. There was an 89.2% increase (from 37 to 70) in the numbers of students who chose 'I'm worried about the repercussion for me or others'.

Figure 9, Percentage of staff anonymous disclosures by reason

Figure 10, Percentage of student anonymous disclosures by reason

There were several incident types in 2023-2024 with a relatively high proportion of anonymous disclosures ('Safeguarding Concern' 68.8%, 'Antisocial behaviour' 60.9%, 'Racism' 56.3%).

Figure 11, Proportions of Anonymous Disclosures by Incident Type, 2023-2024

What is being disclosed?

Since June 2022, the person making the disclosure can select as many incident types as they identify as appropriate, improving the comprehensive description of the incident. Incident types labelled as ‘Other’ are grouped together.

In 2023-2024, the most common incident type was ‘Antisocial behaviour’, with 115 disclosures. This is more than double the number of ‘Antisocial behaviour’ disclosures made in 2022-2023.

Disclosures of 'Harassment' have increased by 87.5% (from 56 to 105), and disclosures of 'Bullying' have increased by 46.6% (from 58 to 85) between 2022-2023 and 2023-2024. Overall, there was an increase in using Report + Support to disclose all incident types apart from 'Drink spiking' and 'Mental health and wellbeing'.

Figure 12, Percentage disclosures by incident type

Incident type	2021-2022	2022-2023	2023-2024
Antisocial behaviour	–	56	115
Harassment	20	56	105
Bullying	29	58	85
Discrimination and/or hate incidents	16	50	83
Mental health and wellbeing	7	49	42
Microaggressions	18	37	64
Sexual assault and rape	37	36	39
Racism	3	31	64
Sexual harrassment and misconduct	26	29	45
Hate crime	7	14	56
Physical violence	3	13	17
Drink spiking	1	13	6
Safeguarding concern	–	10	16
Domestic violence and/or coercive control	6	9	11
Other	46	16	28

For the incident types Antisocial behaviour, Harassment and Bullying, the majority of incidents were reported by students in both 2022-2023 and 2023-2024.

Figure 13, Disclosures by incident type and role

Antisocial behaviour

Antisocial behaviour disclosures made by students rose by 115.9%, from 44 in 2022-2023 to 95 in 2023-2024. One noise-based incident accounted for 26.3% (25) of Antisocial behaviour disclosures made by students. There was no real change in staff disclosures (8 in 2023-2024 compared to 9 in 2022-2023). Disclosures made by ‘Other’ respondents rose from 3 to 12 in the same time frame.

Figure 14, Antisocial Behaviour Incidents by Role

Antisocial behaviour was often selected by the discloser in addition to other incident types; the most common being Harassment (40.9% of all Antisocial behaviour’ cases), Bullying (38.3% of all Antisocial behaviour cases) and Discrimination and/or Hate Incidents (24.3% of all Antisocial behaviour cases).

Antisemitism and Islamophobia

Looking at specific incident details, there was a large increase in the percentage of incidents where antisemitism and Islamophobia were referenced. Between 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, incidents referencing antisemitism rose from one case (0.5%) to 20 cases (5.7%) and incidents referencing Islamophobia rose from zero cases to 18 (5.1%). Incidents have been referred to as antisemitism and Islamophobia in this report when they were defined as such by the person making the disclosure in the incident details section of the disclosure. They have been included in this section through a manual review of incident detail via keywords.

In 2023-2024, for incidents referencing antisemitism, 15 cases (75.0%) were raised by students, 1 by staff (5.0%), and 4 by 'other' (20.0%). In the same year, for incidents referencing Islamophobia, 13 cases (72.2%) were raised by students, 1 by staff (5.6%) and 4 by 'Other' (22.2%).

Figure 15, References to Antisemitism or Islamophobia

Antisemitism and Islamophobia were each referenced in the incident details of 12 (14.8%) Hate crime, 14 (12.5%) Discrimination and/or hate incidents and 11 (12.8%) Racism disclosures.

Figure 16, References to Antisemitism or Islamophobia

What are the disclosure outcomes?

Expert staff practitioners carefully consider all disclosures. The outcomes outlined below reflect the actions taking by staff at the time of receiving and processing a disclosure. Later actions may subsequently be taken. For example, a disclosure may be closed with a description which states that the disclosing person was provided with details of the appropriate reporting process and their options. However, the disclosing person may then go on to make an official report and an investigation may be launched.

In 2023-2024, the most common outcome was for information passed to relevant staff (128 disclosures). This outcome might include, providing staff in relevant departments (for example, in an academic school) with information about concerns raised in the disclosure, and advice. Other actions can also be taken based on the information provided in the disclosure (for example, provision of training to sports teams).

For staff, this has meant that information has been passed to the School/Unit Head and HRBP (HR Business Partner) for awareness or to explore any concerns or knowledge of concerns to determine if an intervention can be made. For example, if a report is made, the Head of School and HRBP would be informed and interventions such as additional training, or conversations with impacted groups, or a reminder of relevant policies, may be actioned.

A disclosure is most often closed as anonymous because insufficient details have been provided to take further action. Without contact details practitioners cannot follow up to clarify the information that has been provided. 115 disclosures (24.4%) were closed as anonymous. Disclosures that are closed as anonymous are instrumental in identifying patterns of behaviours that can help to identify support or changes required to build a safer and more inclusive community. If there are several anonymous complaints in a specific area regarding the same person or concerns, the University might instigate an investigation.

There was a substantial increase in the numbers of disclosures being referred to the police, from three in 2022-2023 to 11 in 2023-2024.

Figure 17, Percentage of disclosures by outcome

Figure 18, Percentage of disclosures by outcome (named)

Figure 19, Percentage of disclosures by outcome (anonymous)

Where did the incidents take place?

In 2023-2024, there was a 92.0% increase in online incidents and a 175.0% increase in incidents located in student housing/private accommodation between 2022-2023 and 2023-2024.

Figure 20, Percentage of disclosures by incident location

There are no discernible trends across the years for the most common incident type per location.

Location	2023-2024	2022-2023	2021-2022
Halls of residence	Harassment	Antisocial behaviour	Other
In a hospitality venue	Sexual assault or sexual harassment	Drink spiking	Sexual harassment
Not given	Antisocial behaviour	–	–
On campus	Harassment	Bullying	Other
Online	Discrimination or hate incidents	Mental health and wellbeing	Bullying
Other	Antisocial behaviour	Four incident types	Other
Student housing and private	Antisocial behaviour	Sexual assault and rape	Sexual assault and rape

Options are available to identify with a particular gender, ethnicity, age, disability, religion and belief and sexual orientation. These data collection points help the University to identify areas for awareness-raising, action, and support.

For both anonymous and named disclosing, there is an option to skip equality monitoring data. This option was added on 14th June 2022 to reduce barriers to disclosing. The numbers of people who did not give any answer for the demographic questions has increased substantially in all demographic questions. This means that the figures may not give an accurate representation of respondent demographics.

Gender

39.4% of people who made a disclosure were women, a decrease of 17.1 percentage points on last year’s figures.  39.3% of student disclosers identified as female.  As a comparison, the proportion of female students across the entire student cohort was 59.5% in 2023-2024. Proportions of disclosures from people with a minority gender identity also fell, from 7.5% to 3.8%. The proportion of men making disclosures has risen 7.2 percentage points from 12.5% to 19.7%, and the proportions of disclosures from people who did not share their gender has also risen, from 23.5% to 37.1%. 
The gender distribution of those who disclose was very similar when looking at students only.

Figure 21, All disclosures by gender

Figure 22, Student disclosures by gender

Looking at men and women only in 2023-2024, higher numbers of women disclosed incidents for all incident types apart from Other and Drink spiking. Minority gender identities are not included in this part of the analysis due to low numbers.

Figure 23, Proportions of Incident Types by Gender, 2023-2024

Sexuality

18.7% of respondents declared a LGBTQI+ sexuality. 21.5% of student disclosers identified as LGBTQI+ which is slightly higher than those who disclosed within the whole student population at 20.5%. The proportion of people identifying as Heterosexual who reported an incident has fallen from 40.5% in 2022-2023 to 23.3% in 2023-2024, whilst the proportion who did not give their sexuality has risen from 19.5% to 35.6%.

Figure 24, Disclosures by sexuality 2023-2024

Ethnicity

23.8% of all respondents in 2023-2024 identified as being from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) ethnicity. For students only, this was 26.3%, which is slightly lower than the percentage of BAME students in the wider student population (27.5%).

Figure 25, Student disclosures by ethnicity

Ethnicity and gender intersectionality

In 2023-2024, 30.6% of males who made a disclosure, identified as from a BAME ethnicity.

21.8% of females who made a disclosure, identified as from a BAME ethnicity.

The proportion of white respondents was slightly higher within males (48.4%) than within female respondents (46.0%).

Figure 26, Proportions of disclosures by gender and ethnicity

Religion

As seen in previous years, the majority of respondents did not give a religious affiliation. Of those who did, 20.3% of respondents overall and 21.9% of student respondents indicated they held no religion or belief (64 overall and 54 students). As a comparison, in 2023-2024, 54.4% of the whole student body had no religion, and 39.5% had a religious affiliation.

Figure 27, Disclosures by religion, 2023-2024

Disability

32.4% of all respondents and 33.2% of student respondents had a disclosed disability in 2023-2024. In the whole student population, 22.9% of students had a declared disability. For those who declared a disability in 2023-2024, the most common disability type was ‘A mental health condition, such as depression, schizophrenia or anxiety disorder’ (47; 13.5% of all respondents and 41 (16.6% of student respondents). This is slightly lower than seen in 2022-2023 (49 (21.9%) of all respondents and 42 (27.6%) of student respondents). In the whole student population, 7.3% of students disclosed that they had a mental health condition.

The numbers of respondents who did not give an answer to the disability question has almost doubled, from 63 to 118. 

Figure 28, Percentage of disclosures by disclosed disability

Age

The numbers of 16–24-year-old respondents has increased, from 121 in 2022-2023 to 154 in 2023-2024. However, due to the large 13.7 percentage point increase in the proportion of respondents who did not give their age group, the percentage of respondents in 2023-2024 who were 16-24 years old has fallen from 60.5% in 2022-2023 to 48.9% in 2023-2024. Looking at student respondents only, 58.7% were in the 16-24 age bracket. In comparison, in the whole student population, 91.3% were in the 16-24 age bracket.

Figure 29, Disclosures by age

 

We will continue to meet with students and staff and review feedback to understand experiences and further needs for the development of the platform. We are keen to understand and remove barriers to making disclosures and to continue to facilitate effective action. We will listen to students and staff and monitor definitions to ensure inclusivity. We have identified the following areas for enhancement in 2025 as a consequence of engaging with students, staff and this report data. These include:

• Building trust in making disclosures to the University, through the continued work of Student Conduct, Student Services, EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion), the REC (Race Equality Charter), Information Assurance & Governance and the Report + Support short life working group. This will include raising awareness of the platform itself and the support available, through focused communication campaigns. It will also involve a review of the data protection impact assessment and scheme risk assessment.
• Building a culture of conflict resolution. Exploring the option to give disclosers the choice to identify ‘disagreement’ and make a self-referral to the Mediation Service for support, advice or a facilitated conversation.
• Supporting students and staff who have encountered Cyber Bullying, Classism, Antisemitism and Islamophobia by providing relevant information and signposting support in the support section of the Report + Support platform.

In the interests of transparency, the staff members involved in the functioning of Report + Support include:

• Expert practitioners. Staff from Student Services, Student Conduct, Human Resources who read the disclosers that are assigned to them, make risk assessments and reach out when contact details are given, to provide support.  Information Assurance and Governance also refer disclosures to provide procedural advice on how best those can be investigated.
• Short Life-Task Group. This working group, chaired by Heather McNeill, Deputy Academic Registrar, has the vital role of looking at ways of building trust in the University reporting processes. It includes a wealth of experience, including (but not limited to) expert practitioners, academic staff members, and representatives from EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion).
• Culture Shift. Culture Shift are the software developers and people behind Report + Support. They work with both universities and the public sector to "empower people to speak up about culture damaging behaviours, making sure more people feel like they belong."
• Relationship Manager with Culture Shift. As the co-ordinator of this report, Rebecca Swarbrick acts as a relationship manager between our staff members and Culture Shift who continue to develop the Report + Support platform. She chairs the staff and student fora and co-ordinates the implementation of improvements to the platform.

Notes on report analysis

• Analysis for this report was provided by Planning. This analysis was made with anonymised raw data. Where people used free text, these have been mapped against main categories where appropriate.
• The person making the disclosure can select as many incident types as they feel appropriate, thus improving the comprehensive description of the incident they are disclosing. The total number of disclosures is less than the total number of incident types selected.
• The data gathered includes disclosures from anonymous and named sources that were made through Report + Support and does not include disclosures made directly to units, e.g., Student Services, Conduct or Human Resources.
• For all disclosures, there are a considerable number of disclosers who do not give personal characteristics details or choose the option ‘prefer not to say’. This means that the total number of, for example, women disclosing, is expected to be higher than the number who choose to give details of gender.

Authors

• Rebecca Swarbrick, Deputy Head of Mediation and Wellbeing
• Susan Williamson, Information Analyst, Planning.

The authors are grateful for collaboration and contribution from students, colleagues from Student Services, Student Conduct, Human Resources, EDI, Student Association and attendees of the Fora.
With support and advice from:

• Rebekah Widdowfield, Vice-Principal (People and Diversity)
• Ruth Unsworth Head of Mediation and Wellbeing
• Expert practitioners from Student Services, Student Conduct and Human Resources
• Paulette Nhlapo, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
• Jennifer Awang, Head of Insights and Analysis
• Pamela Dobson, People and Diversity Executive Officer

Readers are invited to be involved in future Student or Staff Fora, please contact reportandsupport@st-andrews.ac.uk.