Tackling harassment and sexual misconduct: One year on

Higher education should expose students to new ideas, different ways of thinking and alternative perspectives. It should not be a place where students are exposed to harassment or sexual misconduct.

Nearly a quarter of final-year undergraduates who responded to our sexual misconduct survey in 2025 reported sexual harassment since starting their studies. Over 50,000 final-year undergraduates responded to the survey, which showed that:

• 24.5 per cent of respondents experienced sexual harassment since starting their studies
• 14.1 per cent of respondents experienced sexual assault or violence
• women were nearly three times more likely to experience sexual harassment than men.

We know from research that students who have experienced harassment or sexual misconduct while at university may face disruption to their studies as well as lasting struggles with mental and physical health.

We know from our consultation that students care deeply about these issues and that they want the protections to work in practice.

As part of our ‘no surprises’ approach set out in the Sussex lessons learned document, we want to be vocal about good practice and communicate openly where we see risks. This blog post sets out the progress we’ve seen institutions take, but also where we think further action is needed to tackle the risks to students.

Positive steps

Through our conversations with staff at universities and colleges, we’re hearing about how they’re finding new ways to ensure that students understand the issues and know where to turn for help. We’ve seen them take positive steps, including guidance on reporting incidents, awareness campaigns and rethinking the induction process for new students to increase participation in training. Some examples include:

• Campaigns and communications that addressed sexual misconduct directly by using frank and impactful language to call out sexual harassment and sexual violence for what they are
• Increasing participation in training by learning more about how students access induction materials
• Incentivising completion of mandatory training by not allowing students to engage in other activities at an institution until completion (though this may be waived for particular students where there are good reasons to do so)

From our conversations with students’ unions, we know they are working with their universities to help shape their approach to harassment and sexual misconduct – to strengthen policies, improve processes and ensure students’ voices are reflected in decision making.

Establishing consistent support

All of this shows that many universities and colleges are heading in the right direction. However, we’ve heard from students and seen from our monitoring that in some aspects of our requirements, many universities and colleges still have work to do to protect students from abuses of power, provide them with clear information about the steps in place to protect them, and ensure reporting processes work in practice.

We have already worked with a number of institutions where we have identified concerns, and have seen them take positive steps in response to our interventions. But we consider that there is more to do. We will continue to engage and where appropriate consider additional steps.

One of the areas where there needs to be further progress relates to relationships between students and staff. Intimate relationships between a student and a member of staff with academic or other responsibilities for them can have serious consequences. Institutions must take steps to make a significant and credible difference in protecting students from conflicts of interest, abuse of power or both. We have stated that a ban on these types of relationships is a step that could make such a difference.

Ban or no ban, universities and colleges must put credible steps in place so that students are protected from conflicts of interest and abuses of power. It is not enough simply to make a statement expressing disapproval of, or discouraging, such relationships.

This ties in with the importance of having effective information and training in place for staff and students. Students deserve to know how to identify where abuses of power may occur and what they look like, and what to do if they’re affected by coercion or abuse of power. As well as tackling these, training should also cover what constitutes harassment and sexual misconduct and what to do if an incident happens, to establish a shared understanding for everyone at the university or college. Where an incident does occur, students need to know how to report this and what support is available to them.

Next steps

We know that universities and colleges would find examples of effective practice useful to inform the ongoing development of their approach. To support this, we are looking to share approaches or policies that are making a positive difference, as part of our efforts to support higher education providers comply with our requirements.

We will shortly get in touch with universities and colleges asking them to let us know of effective steps they have taken, such as working with students to improve their engagement with training or ensuring reporting processes work in practice.

What else the OfS is doing

We will continue reviewing information we receive, and will normally engage early with a university or college where we see risks. Where concerns remain following engagement, we will take further action.

We will also run the sexual misconduct survey again next year to build our understanding of the scale of the situation, and further to support transparency and strengthen the evidence base across the sector.

While each institution’s approach is likely to differ, we ask for one shared commitment: every student should be protected from harassment and sexual misconduct, wherever they study.