FOI_25-180 Student academic misconduct and subsequent referrals
Date of response: 11 July 2025
We have now considered your request of 17 June 2025 for the following information:
Student demographics
Question 1). In the academic year 2022-23 how many students studied at your institution (across all courses and levels of study)? ______________________
Of that total number please provide a breakdown by the following demographics:
Nationality.
Ethnicity.
The number that were required to complete an English language test prior to commencing study with you (such as IELTS).
Disability, as a total figure and where possible a breakdown of type, for example in the following format:
A No disability
B Social/communication impairment such as Asperger's syndrome/other autistic spectrum disorder
C Blind or have a serious visual impairment uncorrected by glasses
D Deaf or have a serious hearing impairment
E Long standing illness or health condition such as cancer, HIV, diabetes, chronic heart disease, or epilepsy
F Mental health condition, such as depression, schizophrenia or anxiety disorder G Specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or AD(H)D
H Physical impairment or mobility issues, such as difficulty using your arms or using a wheelchair or crutches
I Disability, impairment or medical condition that is not listed above
J Two or more impairments and/or disabling medical conditions
Subsequent offences – academic misconduct referral.
Question 2). In the academic year 2022-23, how many referrals for academic misconduct were subsequent offences (i.e. a student had previous substantiated academic misconduct offences).
Of that total number please provide a breakdown by the following demographics:
Nationality
Ethnicity.
The number that were required to complete an English language test prior to commencing study with you (such as IELTS).
Disability, as a total figure and where possible a breakdown of type, for example in the following format:
A No disability
B Social/communication impairment such as Asperger's syndrome/other autistic spectrum disorder
C Blind or have a serious visual impairment uncorrected by glasses
D Deaf or have a serious hearing impairment
E Long standing illness or health condition such as cancer, HIV, diabetes, chronic heart disease, or epilepsy
F Mental health condition, such as depression, schizophrenia or anxiety disorder
G Specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or AD(H)D
H Physical impairment or mobility issues, such as difficulty using your arms or using a wheelchair or crutches
I Disability, impairment or medical condition that is not listed above
J Two or more impairments and/or disabling medical conditions
Subsequent offences – academic misconduct cases substantiated
Question 3). In the academic year 2022-23, how many substantiated cases of academic misconduct were subsequent offences?
Of that total number please provide a breakdown by the following demographics:
Nationality
Ethnicity.
The number that were required to complete an English language test prior to commencing study with you (such as IELTS).
Disability, as a total figure and where possible a breakdown of type, for example in the following format:
A No disability
B Social/communication impairment such as Asperger's syndrome/other autistic spectrum disorder
C Blind or have a serious visual impairment uncorrected by glasses
D Deaf or have a serious hearing impairment
E Long standing illness or health condition such as cancer, HIV, diabetes, chronic heart disease, or epilepsy
F Mental health condition, such as depression, schizophrenia or anxiety disorder
G Specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or AD(H)D
H Physical impairment or mobility issues, such as difficulty using your arms or using a wheelchair or crutches
I Disability, impairment or medical condition that is not listed above
J Two or more impairments and/or disabling medical conditions
Our response:
We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.
Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University does hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information for questions 2 and 3 of your request, that is, information relating to students referred to for academic misconduct which are subsequent offences, and of those, the ethnicity, nationality, disability (count of and/or breakdown) and the number of students required to complete an English language test prior to commencing study with us.
We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
Information relating to students referred to our Student Senate Disciplinary Committee (SSDC) for formal investigation into academic misconduct is held within our Learning and Teaching Services (LTS). Information relating to student ethnicity, disability status and whether they have completed an English language test is held within our Business Information Unit (BIU). There is no central record of where all the requested information is held.
To explain our position, LTS do not record against each SSDC case whether the student had previously been referred for academic misconduct, nor do they record the demographics of the students referred. To extract the information you seek, we would need to check each student referred in any academic year against previous year’s data to ascertain if any students had been referred more than once. Further to this, we would need to review the student record within BIU for the ethnicity, disability and English language test information.
For the academic year 2022-23 alone, we have identified 67 students referred to our SSDC for formal investigation into academic misconduct, which may fall into the scope of your request. The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate each individual record manually.
We have calculated it would take 20 minutes per record, or 22.33 hours, to locate and manually interrogate each student record, which exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above.
Under section 16 of the Act, and to assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we can provide all the requested information for question 1, and we can provide the total number of student referrals for academic misconduct per requested year for question 2, and the total number of substantiated cases for question 3.
Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request.
We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working-day time-limit will begin again.
We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.