Cardiff Metropolitan University is committed to promoting and implementing best practice in Equality and Diversity (E&D) in order to provide a working and learning environment to enable both staff and students to reach their full potential.
We wish to work beyond the legislative requirements in the delivery of E&D policies, and aim for equality of opportunity to be embedded in everything we do. Cardiff Metropolitan University is an organisation where diversity is valued, equality is promoted and services are delivered to support all staff and students.
The University is aware of the need to recognise people’s identities as multi-dimensional and is committed to providing a positive working and learning environment free from discrimination, harassment, and victimisation on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex or sexual orientation.
In Wales, the Welsh language is often included under an equality banner. Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Welsh Language Unit manages the implementation of the Welsh Language Scheme.
For more information about equality and diversity at Cardiff Metropolitan University please contact equality@cardiffmet.ac.uk.
Non-Disclosure Agreements
Cardiff Metropolitan University is a values-driven organisation where a safe, supportive, and inclusive working and learning environment is essential to ensuring students and staff achieve their full potential.
The University does not permit the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) in relation to staff or student cases involving sexual or gender-based violence, threats of violence, harassment, abuse, or abuse and harassment cases more broadly defined.
This firm policy position reflects best practice across the higher education sector and is reflected in the recommendations of the Universities UK (UUK) Guidance on Staff Student Sexual Misconduct which is the outcome of a UUK Advisory Group chaired by Professor Cara Aitchison, Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff Metropolitan University. This Group has been developing Guidance for addressing staff student sexual misconduct within the higher education sector and the Guidance will be launched in the early part of 2022.
This position is reflected in the University's Professional Code of Conduct adopted in 2021 and aligns with the UUK Guidance on Sexual Misconduct and with guidance from ACAS and the EHRC. It also supports the pledge to end the use of non-disclosure agreements and launched by the Minister for Universities in England in January 2022 and which is backed by the NUS, campaign groups and MPs and already adopted by some universities in England.
The University is committed to UUK's wider
Changing the Culture programme of work and to the activist principles of 'Can't Buy My Silence'. Specifically in relation to sexual misconduct, Cardiff Metropolitan University is committed to:
- Defining and embedding an inclusive and positive culture to ensure an environment which prevents and does not enable or condone sexual misconduct.
- Discouraging close personal relationships between staff and students, disclosing these where they exist and ensuring the removal of staff from all responsibilities which may entail a perceived or actual conflict of interest.
- Reviewing policies regularly so that students and staff have confidence that the University will act in a way that is fair and transparent.
- Developing and maintaining a robust prevention strategy together with a fair, clear and accessible approach for responding to allegations, disclosures, reports, and complaints of sexual or gender-based violence, threats of violence of a sexual or gender-based nature, sexual or gender-based harassment, sexual or gender-based abuse or abuse and harassment cases more broadly defined.
- Monitoring, evaluating and reviewing practice, and sharing lessons learned across the sector, to support a cycle of continuous improvement.
- Adopting a systematic approach to collecting anonymised data on reports of incidents of sexual misconduct and taking action to respond to any emerging trends.
