Student guide to harassment and sexual misconduct

We asked all final year students across England to complete a pilot survey on sexual misconduct in higher education after completing the 2025 National Student Survey (NSS). 

The surveys have now closed.

Why did we do this?

There is currently limited data on sexual misconduct affecting students in higher education in England.

We ran a similar pilot survey in 2023 with a small number of universities. By surveying students on a national scale, we hoped to:

• understand the prevalence of sexual misconduct experienced by students
• gain insight on how and where interventions might be targeted to tackle sexual misconduct
• test an approach to capturing prevalence data at a national level.

How will my data be used?

Once we have the 2025 pilot survey responses, we plan to publish these at aggregate and sector level. Where it's possible to do so, and student anonymity can be guaranteed, we plan to share with universities and colleges their own data so that it can support any local initiatives on this important issue.

This data will also be aggregated so that individual students cannot be identified. We are aiming to publish data from the pilot in September 2025.

Full details are available in our privacy notice, available under 'student surveys'.

What support is available for me?

Our help and support page lists national organisations and charities that may be able to support you if you have experienced sexual misconduct.