Harassment happens if the unwanted actions of an education provider violate the claimants dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them. Unwanted actions may include;

• spoken or written words or abuse
• imagery, graffiti
• physical gestures
• facial expression
• mimicry, jokes
• pranks.

Harassment should be connected to a protected characteristic, like disability, but you do not need to be a disabled person yourself. You may be associated with a disabled person, or people may mistakenly believe you have an impairment.

Example: a teacher repeatedly shouts at a pupil for failing to carry out an instruction because, as part of their autism, the pupil has receptive language difficulties and may have either misunderstood what has been asked, or needs more time to process the instruction.