The Office for Students (OfS) has published their regulatory requirements – to come into effect from 1 August 2025 – for all higher education institutions (HEIs) in England to address harassment and sexual misconduct.

Alongside this, it has published data from two surveys it carried out on sexual misconduct in higher education. The first is a survey of students at 12 selected higher education institutions, and the second is a representative survey of 3017 students in higher education.

This is a huge step – in any of the UK’s nations, there has never been a statutory requirement for higher education institutions to take specific steps to address harassment and sexual misconduct, other then general provisions such as the Equality Act. While sector-wide legal and practice guidance for student-student harassment, sexual misconduct and hate crime was published by Universities UK in 2016, and for staff-student sexual harassment in 2022, its take-up has been patchy to say the least. My own research as well as an independent sector evaluation have shown that there are huge differences between HEIs in how they are addressing this issue.

The new regulation is not going to be a silver bullet; I predict there will remain a patchy and inconsistent approach across the sector due to the weak monitoring and evaluation regime (as discussed below). But it will provide a tool for activists and ‘complaint collectives’ as Sara Ahmed describes us, to push their institutions to do more. So it’s up to us to use this regulation to try and get our institutions to do better.

And there’s a lot we can work with. At first glance, it’s great to see that the OfS has taken on board a lot of the issues raised in the consultation. They have removed reference to criminal justice language for example from the Sexual Offences Act, and they have amended the requirement to have all relevant information in a single document to ‘a requirement to maintain and publish a single comprehensive source of information’. In addition, while the Freedom of Speech Act – which prohibited the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) in bullying and harassment cases in higher education – is widely expected to be overturned, the ban on NDAs is now included in this document, although as noted below staff NDAs are presumably not covered as the regulation only covers students.

Below, I’ve covered key areas: the survey findings; staff-student relationships; training requirements; fair processes and monitoring and evaluation, before looking at what’s left out of the regulatory requirements and the prognosis for the sector actually acting on this regulation during a major funding crisis.

Survey findings

The findings on prevalence of sexual misconduct are slightly lower than systematic reviews and recent studies of UK HEIs have found. Systematic reviews from Steele et al (2023) and Lagdon et al (2023) from across the UK, Ireland and the US have found prevalence rates from 7% to 86%. Steele et al.’s recent study from Oxford University found that in the last year, 20.5% of respondents experienced at least one act of attempted or forced sexual touching or rape, and 52.7% of respondents experienced at least one act of sexual harassment. And my own study of a UK HEI (not Oxford) found that 30% of respondents had been subjected to sexual violence since enrolling in their university, and 55% had been subjected to sexual harassment.

So the OfS’ study finding of 20% of respondents experiencing sexual harassment, and 9% experiencing sexual violence, is on the lower side. Extrapolating these figures gives a sense of the scale of the challenge for HEIs – it is daunting. 9% of students equals over quarter of a million students in the UK being subjected to sexual violence, so it’s not exactly low.

Also in line with findings from our own survey at one HEI in England, those responsible for the sexual misconduct behaviours are primarily other male students from the same university. Women were more likely to be targeted, but for male students who experienced sexual misconduct, they were targeted equally by male and female students, but overall, men made up 85 per cent of unwanted sexual contact perpetrators. While these are sobering findings, this is an important opportunity sector to intervene in addressing this issue – it is predominantly students who are both perpetrators and victims. As students are targeting other students, then there is real potential for HEIs as sites of intervention to change attitudes in order to try and change behaviours.

There are also some good news stories – or perhaps, slightly less bad news stories – in the survey responses. From the Savanta poll of 3017 respondents, while most students didn’t report incidents of sexual harassment or misconduct to their HEI, of those who did report, more than half thought the response was good or very good, while around a fifth thought it was poor or very poor. Of course, a fifth having a poor experience of reporting is likely to indicate a high number of students being let down by their institution, which is far too high. A ‘very poor’ experience could include having to attend classes or remain in accommodation with the student who has raped you; having a lack of support with academic options to help you remain in study after experiencing sexual assault; a university failing to deal with repeated ongoing sexual harassment from a staff member towards students; or a lack of support and safety leading to students dropping out of their courses, losing their careers, or taking their own lives as a result of the poor response.

Furthermore, the survey across 12 HEIs, asking the same questions, found that a higher proportion of students – 43% – experienced a poor response. This difference could be due to the sampling, or it could indicate that the 12 HEIs participating in the study perhaps have less infrastructure in place in this area than the wider sector.

But let’s be clear, whether 20% or 43%, this is far too high. Nevertheless, perhaps because I spend so much time thinking about the poor responses, I’m heartened to see that there is a some good support happening.

Staff- student relationships

One of the areas the regulation covers is staff-student intimate relationships. Options that were on the table included a ‘register’ of staff-student relationships being held by higher education institutions (HEIs) or requiring HEIs to prohibit such relationships. While the former option was widely expected to be implemented, the OfS have not taken this step, but rather have gone for a bolder move that stops just short of a ban. They are requiring HEIs to take ‘one or more steps which could make a significant and credible difference in protecting students from any actual or potential conflict of interest and/or abuse of power.’ Such a step could include a ban on intimate personal relationships between relevant staff and students but HEIs may instead chose to propose other ways to protect students from abuses of power from staff.

This is stronger than expected. The sector’s preferred option was a register, an approach which was likely to be administered by Human Resources staff who do not have any training in how to recognise abusive relationships. This would have tied up staff resources in an entirely useless window-dressing exercise. By contrast, the step the OfS has taken instead provides quite a clever way of giving HEIs some autonomy over this policy, while strongly steering them towards a ban. The wording is also significant: HEIs are required to protect students from abuses of power. This framing shows a significant shift away from wording around ‘conflicts of interest’ that has previously held sway in the sector in relation to such relationships, a framing that presents both parties as equals and ignores the ways in which differences in institutional status, disciplinary prestige, expertise, and usually age and gender, create clear risks of abusive relationships occurring.

Indeed, the OFS’ own data – published alongside the regulatory requirements – shows a massive problem with coercive staff-student relationships. As noted above, this data comprises two new studies: a survey of students across 12 HEIs, and a separate representative panel survey of 3017 students from across the sector. The first study found 1% of students had had an ‘intimate relationship’ with a staff member, and the second study found that 10% had done so in the last year, half of whom were with staff members involved in their education, assessment or with a pastoral/professional responsibility towards them. Many of these relationships were not fully consensual; a third of those in such relationships said they felt pressure to begin, continue or take the relationship further than they wanted because they were worried that refusing would negatively impact them, their studies or career in some way. Even consensual relationships led to problems when the relationship broke up. On top of this, one in six respondents from the panel survey had had a staff member attempt to pressure them into an intimate relationship in the last year.

These findings are shocking. While measuring prevalence of sexual misconduct is notoriously difficult methodologically, even if we take the more conservative 1% figure, this suggests that at least 28,000 students have recently had intimate relationships with staff, and around 10,000 of these are not fully consensual. They show what our research between The 1752 Group and the National Union of Students revealed back in 2018: that abuses of power are indeed occurring on an ongoing basis within UK higher education. Our research also found that the majority of students are uncomfortable with staff having intimate relationships with students, and the OfS have published almost identical findings: 81% of their respondents were uncomfortable with staff having romantic or sexual relationships with students, rising to 89% of women students. In response to these findings, at The 1752 Group we have been campaigning to get the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU), which represent academic staff and others, to support prohibiting such relationships. Several local UCU branches have passed motions in favour of this position and the proposal is under discussion to become national UCU policy.

These findings, and the emerging UCU support, give HEIs a clear steer to implement more robust professional boundaries between staff and students. Of course, prohibiting staff from entering into such relationships is not going to stop them from occurring. What such a policy will do, however, is send a clear signal to students who are being targeted for such behaviour so that they know when they’re able to raise concerns. This will help students who have been targeted for ‘grooming’ and ‘boundary-blurring’ behaviours to recognise that this is unacceptable and to seek support. While the OfS regulations also require HEIs to have ‘fair and credible’ processes for formal handling of such reports, our research shows that many are a long way away from this in practice, so we anticipate problems with HEIs attempting to take action to enforce this policy. Its major impact will therefore be around prevention rather than response.

Training requirements

One of the most challenging aspects for HEIs in implementing these new conditions of registration – along with ensuring a fair process for handling reports, as discussed below – will be implementing the training requirements that the OfS have asked for. There are several levels of training required:

For all new students
For all staff
For staff involved in handling disclosures or reports

Yes, you read that correctly – ALL students and ALL staff.

For all staff, the OfS state that ‘we expect all staff to receive training about a provider’s approach to tackling harassment and sexual misconduct’.

For all students, this should include ‘induction sessions for new students contain training to ensure they understand behaviour that may constitute harassment and/or sexual misconduct’ as well as the HEI’s approach to tackling harassment and sexual misconduct.

But this can’t be just a quick online tick-box video. The OfS have specified that while online delivery is possible,

we would expect there to be an appropriate amount of time dedicated to mandatory training as well as an opportunity for attendees to ask questions. For example, a short online session at the beginning of a student’s higher education career that does not allow for questions and discussion, is unlikely to be sufficient to meet our proposed requirements.

The OfS also specify that ‘staff with a particular role in tackling harassment and sexual misconduct are likely to need more training than others’. This should not just be a one-off but rather it should be ‘maintained’, i.e. carried out regularly, and evaluated. We’d like to see all HR staff who are involved in handling staff-student sexual misconduct complaints engaging with our training, and coming back for updates every year. In addition, staff investigating complaints in this area are – unbelievably! – often not trained, and this is an urgent area to address.

Luckily, The 1752 Group have some relevant training packages:

For postgraduate researchers (PGRs) and PGR supervisors
For staff handling reports of staff-student sexual misconduct (particularly HR staff)

PGRs are often forgotten in a general institutional offer, so we hope that PGR induction will start to include these sessions. As our training is evidence-based – drawing on our research – and delivered by experts, these meet the requirements of the OfS that:

Training is underpinned by credible evidence, and its effectiveness is evaluated [and] training is designed and delivered by persons with credible and demonstrable expertise.

We’ve carried out a light touch evaluation and are now in the process of a more formal evaluation of the PGR and supervisor training, so this also will meet OfS requirements. We’re looking into options for train-the-trainer for our PGR and supervisor sessions, but this may be difficult as we’ll need to train people to have ‘credible and demonstrable expertise’ in order to deliver. Watch this space.

Fair processes

Our research project Higher Education After #MeToo looked at how HEIs were handling reports of gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) from staff and students. We found there were significant challenges in implementing the ‘fair’ process that the OfS are asking for. Particularly in staff-student sexual misconduct cases (and in staff-staff cases, which is outside the scope of the OfS regulations) we found that untrained staff were investigating and handling sexual misconduct cases. There is a big piece of work to be done in Human Resources departments and/or complaints departments in HEIs to equip them to handle staff-student sexual misconduct complaints – in line with the training requirements as noted above.

We’ve also drawn attention to the ways in which the standard process for investigating sexual misconduct gives more rights to responding parties (the person accused of misconduct) than those reporting. The reporting party ends up being a ‘witness’ to the disciplinary case that the university takes against the responding party. This means the reporting party – the survivor – has no right to call witnesses, see all evidence, appeal the outcome, or even know the actions taken as a result of their complaint.

The OfS has a steer towards addressing this, but it could be stronger. They’ve stated that HEIs need to provide information about

how the provider ensures that investigations undertaken and decisions made in respect of incidents of harassment and/or sexual misconduct are credible, fair and otherwise reflect established principles of natural justice (my emphasis)

If HEIs continue to use a process which disadvantages reporting parties, then we think it is unfair, and that this could be open to judicial review. Our guidance on staff-student sexual misconduct complaints sets out how the process could be adapted to address these issues (applicable to student-student complaints as well).

The OfS also weighs in on providing information at the end of a complaint. As I’ve argued with legal and practitioner colleagues, failing to share actions taken – including disciplinary actions such as dismissal – at the end of a complaint does not clash with GDPR responsibilities. The OfS state that HEIs should explain:

how the provider ensures that persons directly affected by any decisions made in respect of incidents of harassment and/or sexual misconduct are directly informed about the decisions and the reasons for them. This includes, but is not limited to, persons who have alleged and/or experienced incidents of harassment and/or sexual misconduct and actual or alleged perpetrators [my emphasis]

There is a lot riding on the interpretation of the word ‘decisions’ here. Does it mean ‘outcome’ or ‘disciplinary actions taken’? If the former, there is a risk that this is not strong enough; a complainant might be informed about a decision (eg ‘your complaint has been upheld’) and the reasons taken (‘because we have assessed the evidence as follows’) without sharing actions taken as a result of the complaint (‘so we have dismissed/expelled him’). Complainants should not have to go through a lengthy and distressing process without knowing what action has been taken as a result of the complaint, particularly as the reason why many people report in the first place is to make sure that what happened to them doesn’t also happen to others. They need to know that, as a result of their complaint, other students/staff will be safer. HEIs therefore need to interpret ‘decisions’ in the above guidance, as ‘disciplinary actions and outcomes’.

More generally, the level of detail given in the condition of registration is not going to be sufficient to support staff dealing with complaints/disciplinary processes who are struggling with the lack of clear legal or policy guidance in this area. The dominant model for this work across the UK from recent years is ‘sharing best practice’ in order to disseminate ideas across the sector. This leaves complex processual and legal questions to be resolved by frontline staff. As a result, HEIs and usually individual staff members have to carry responsibility for unclear procedures with extremely high levels of risk. This issue could be mitigated by the OfS providing follow-up guidance to clarify the types of issues that we highlighted in Higher Education After #MeToo, such as what to do when there are informal reports but no formal complaint and how to address group/multiple complaints, as well as putting resources into developing options for alternative approaches to formal complaints.

Monitoring and evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation is light touch, to say the least, in line with the OfS’ ‘risk-based’ approach (which means it won’t do anything unless it receives evidence of the risk of breaching its conditions). It states that monitoring and evaluation will occur

through intelligence and evidence-gathering practices, such as the receipt of reportable events and notifications, information that may come from third parties, as well as other data that we may receive from time to time.

If you’re thinking that sounds pretty vague, then you’d be right. The OfS has a system of ‘notifications’ which mean you can send information to them, but you will never find out how they have used this information, nor do they publish anything which tells us what they do with it. As we’ve previously written [Word document], this is inadequate and means that universities are held to a different standard of accountability than charities.

So, while HEIs will be taking action on this regulation, if they don’t have anything adequate in place by 1^st August 2025, they’re highly unlikely to get into trouble with the regulator. On top of this, if students report to their HEI and are victimised or otherwise negatively impacted by reporting or if their HEI fails to keep them safe from the staff member/student who has targeted them, this regulatory approach has nothing for them. There are no mechanisms to hold HEIs accountable for this.

The existing approach for students is to go to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education if they are unhappy with how their complaint has been handled, however as I’ve previously demonstrated, the OIA is inaccessible to many student complainants as they have to get through their own HEI’s processes first, and then if they do access its services it usually can’t offer what they need – to keep themselves and others safe and to continue their studies/careers. The only other option is legal action, which has prohibitively short time limits and is too expensive for most students to be able to access. So we are still going to see students who have been failed by their universities going public and sharing their experiences on social media and mainstream media. In fact, this is likely to happen even more as there will be more information available about reporting to HEIs but some institutions will not have sufficient systems up and running by next August to handle reports sensitively and effectively.

So accountability mechanisms are still a huge problem here; the OfS would argue that it is an institutional regulator, not a complaints ombuds organisation and it takes action on the level of the sector and institutions as a whole, not individual cases. Nevertheless, we’d encourage people who are in this situation to send a notification to the OfS – even if it will feel like shouting into the void.

To address this issue, I’d like to see public data reporting requirements on HEIs, for example annual reports (such as some HEIs already do) on number of complaints and outcomes of these; data on anonymous reports; and student consultation and engagement with survivors/reporting parties as well as how HEIs have responded to the concerns raised.

What’s left out?

Despite the high demands that this regulation is going to place on HEIs, there is an awful lot that is missing.

What happened to racial harassment and other forms of harassment?

Other forms of ‘protected characteristics’ under the Equality Act are included in the definition of ‘harassment’: age; disability; gender reassignment; race; religion or belief; sex; and sexual orientation. (Pregnancy and maternity discrimination, while they are protected characteristics under the Equality Act, are not included in relation to protection from harassment).

Throughout the documents outlining the regulatory requirements, there is a lot less focus on racial harassment than sexual misconduct. Nevertheless, this is obviously a crucial area to address; the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s important 2019 research found that students who report racism and racial harassment are also receiving poor responses from HEIs.

In general, there’s a danger that the focus on sexual misconduct means that HEIs forget that this is about ALL protected characteristics.

Where is gender?

The wording of the regulatory requirements gives it away: ‘harassment and sexual misconduct’ rather than gender-based violence and harassment. Nevertheless, the survey findings reveal the gendered nature of this issue; the vast majority of perpetrators are men and the vast majority of those victimised are women – and even where men are victimised it’s equally likely to be from other men as from women. And as we know from wider research (such as this large study of students in Australia), non-binary or trans students are MUCH more likely to be targeted for sexual harassment or abuse than cis students.

This is relevant because a gendered analysis is missing from this framework. Yes, HEIs themselves can introduce the concepts of misogyny or sexism in carrying out training or interventions. But in the current climate where online misogyny is rife, a gender-blind approach risks leaving the causes of much sexual harassment and misconduct unaddressed, while only targeting the behaviours that result from it.

What about domestic abuse?

The response to the consultation noted that various responses asked for domestic abuse to be covered as well. Indeed, my own survey of an English HEI – asking about physical and psychological aspects of ‘dating violence’ – found that 26% of survey respondents had been subjected to ‘dating violence’, such as being pushed, grabbed or shook, or being scared of someone they were in a relationship with, and 11% of respondents had had at least one experience of being pushed, grabbed or shaken by someone they’d been in a relationship with during their time at the University. (There were, however, some methodological issues with the survey which you can read about in our open-access academic article).

The OfS have not given particularly clear reasons for why they have decided not to include domestic abuse, but have simply stated that:

Providers will be permitted to provide further examples of activities meeting this definition in their policies and will remain able to extend their policies to cover a wider definition as long as they do not contradict or conflict with the definition in the condition

This is a huge gap; young people are more likely to experience domestic abuse than other age groups so this is a missed opportunity to address this issue.

What about Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?

The Office for Students is the regulator for higher education in England only. So, this regulation does not apply to HEIs in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. In Wales, there is a new tertiary education regulator and word on the street is that they do indeed plan to introduce regulatory requirements in this area, but when and what is at present unknown. The Scottish Government have been putting funding into this area and supporting research and resource development, but I have not heard of any plans to implement regulatory requirements. Northern Ireland is a much smaller context with very few HEIs, which are under the banner of the Department for the Economy but again I am not aware of any plans to introduce regulation in this area. Students and staff from these nations may wish to contact their relevant government or regulatory body – or simply their MP – and ask about plans in this area.

And what about staff who experience sexual misconduct from other staff?

The Office for Students’ condition of registration in this area only applies to students. This means that staff who are targeted for harassment or misconduct by other staff are excluded from these regulatory requirements. At a time when HE staff have been feeling overworked and overlooked, and many of whom are under threat of redundancy, this feels like an extra kick in the teeth.

I had been assuming, as I suspect others have, that the OfS’ remit only covers students. However, as they are the regulator for higher education institutions in general, it seems that there might have been scope for them to also require their approach to cover staff as well. I’d welcome any comments or thoughts on this point.

But aren’t universities all broke?

There is an ongoing funding crisis in UK higher education, and so this regulation could hardly have come at a worse time. At least half of UK HEIs are shedding staff and we’ll be looking at many thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of academic and professional services staff leaving the sector over the coming months. In this context, it is going to be an enormous challenge for universities to implement these regulatory requirements by August next year. Of course, addressing harassment and sexual violence should not be an add-on, but should be fundamental to HEIs’ everyday functioning. Nevertheless, this has not been the case to date, and requiring this shift right now is going to be a challenge for many institution. Let’s hope that the current funding crisis doesn’t derail this work.

Anna Bull, 31 July 2024

*Further material was added to the sections on ‘Fair processes’ and ‘Monitoring and evaluation’ on 1 August 2024

Selected references

References

Bull, A., & Page, T. (2022). The Governance of Complaints in UK Higher Education: Critically Examining ‘Remedies’ for Staff Sexual Misconduct. Social & Legal Studies, 31(1), 27–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/09646639211002243

Bull, A., & Page, T. (2021). Students’ accounts of grooming and boundary-blurring behaviours by academic staff in UK higher education. Gender and Education, 33(8), 1057–1072. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2021.1884199

Bull, A., Bradley, A., Kanyeredzi, A., Page, T., Shi, C. C., & Wilson, J. (2023). Professional boundaries between faculty/staff and students in UK higher education: Students’ levels of comfort with personal and sexualised interactions. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 47(6), 711–726. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2023.2226612

Bull, A., Calvert-Lee, G., & Page, T. (2021). Discrimination in the complaints process: Introducing the sector guidance to address staff sexual misconduct in UK higher education. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 25(2), 72–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603108.2020.1823512

Bull, A., & Shannon, E. (2023). Higher Education After #MeToo: Institutional responses to reports of gender-based violence and harassment. The 1752 Group/University of York. https://1752group.com/higher-education-after-metoo/

Shannon, E. R., & Bull, A. (2024). Unwilling trust: Unpacking the assumption of trust between sexual misconduct reporters and their institutions in UK higher education. Sociology Compass, 18(3), e13197. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13197

Bull, A., Bradley, A., Sell, B., & Turner-McIntyre, H. (2021). Is this normal? Students’ experiences of sexual and gender-based harassment and violence at the University of Portsmouth. University of Portsmouth Students’ Union.

Bull, A., & Turner-McIntyre, H. (2023). What institution-level surveys of sexual violence and harassment can reveal. Wonkhe. Retrieved 5 October 2023, from https://wonkhe.com/blogs/what-institution-level-surveys-of-sexual-violence-and-harassment-can-reveal-2/

Reynolds, M., Anyadike-Danes, N., Lagdon, S., Aventin, Á., & Armour, C. (2023). Prevalence of unwanted sexual experiences and their associations on university students in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland: A systematic review. Journal of Sexual Aggression, 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/13552600.2023.2243992

Steele, B., Martin, M., Sciarra, A., Melendez-Torres, G. J., Degli Esposti, M., & Humphreys, D. K. (2023). The Prevalence of Sexual Assault Among Higher Education Students: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analyses. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 15248380231196119. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380231196119

Steele, B., Degli Esposti, M., Mandeville, P., & Humphreys, D. K. (2023). Sexual Violence Among Higher Education Students in the United Kingdom: Results from the Oxford Understanding Relationships, Sex, Power, Abuse and Consent Experiences Study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 08862605231212167. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605231212167

Bull, A., Bradley, A., & Turner-McIntyre, H. (2021). Is this normal? Students’ experiences of sexual and gender-based harassment and violence. The 1752 Group