Overview and responsibilities

Chief Examiners must manage reported breaches through Service Console Lite. Unless a case is dismissed outright or sufficiently serious to be directly referred to SCC, you must share the evidence with the student and provide them an opportunity to respond before reaching a decision. This guide provides a high level summary of the entire process.

Important Note
Service Console Lite has limited automations and requires manual actions. CEs must manually attach evidence and send student notifications using approved email templates (Notice of Suspected Breach with evidence, and breach outcome templates - dismissal, warning or alleged misconduct) and execute decisions through the Make a Decision workflow. See here for how to send emails using Service Console Lite.

Chief Examiner investigation steps:

1. Assess the report and evidence
   Review the initial report and evidence to determine whether to dismiss the matter (due to insufficient evidence or lack of a breach) or initiate a formal investigation. As procedural fairness is an essential requirement (see below), adhering strictly to required procedures prevents cases from being dismissed on administrative grounds.
2. Give student opportunity to respond
   Issue the Notice of Suspected Breach with attached evidence via Service Console Lite using the official template. Students must have at least 5 working days to respond. Allow the student to respond via a written submission, an interview, or both. If the student hasn’t responded and 5 working days have passed, then the chief examiner will need to progress the case with the evidence collected.
3. Assess student responseReview the student’s response and evidence (or proceed if the response deadline passes) to classify the matter as either a minor breach or potential academic misconduct. This will require you to exercise your academic judgement based on the evidence before you. You can consult this page to understand more about what to look for.
4. Make and record your decisionLog the decision in Service Console Lite using the ‘Make a Decision’ workflow. Suspected academic misconduct must be referred to SCC. For minor breaches, you may issue an educative response or dismiss the matter. For your considerations when making a decision, refer to this resource.
5. Send outcome to studentManually send the official outcome  template via Service Console Lite, outlining the decision and the specific reasons behind it. You must both notify the system and the student of your decision.
6. Implement your decisionApply educative responses immediately for minor breaches. For matters referred to SCC, apply a WH grade on the student and await notification of the final decision, which may take several weeks or months if formal appeals are lodged. This page provides further guidance on implementing your decision.