Making a significant and credible difference

Read the transcript of her speech.

Thank you for inviting me to speak today. I feel fortunate to be speaking with you all here at Universities UK, the creators of ‘Changing the Culture’. We’re almost 10 years on from UUK establishing the taskforce, and its influential report has become a key driving force for the higher education sector to address harassment and sexual misconduct.

As part of my role at the Office for Students I have had the privilege of helping to reform our approach to listening to students. Students are clear that harassment and sexual misconduct are issues they are concerned about and they felt we needed to set clearer expectations.

I am not telling you anything you don’t already know when I say that harassment and sexual misconduct can have serious and long term effects on students’ lives, whether this is through impacts on their health, both physical and mental, or their sense of belonging and safety at university or college. These factors can have negative knock on effects on students’ academic experience and outcomes. And the impacts of harassment or sexual misconduct can also persist, affecting people’s lives in the longer term in a range of ways. We know that there are different risk points for harassment and sexual misconduct and particularly that induction can be a period with heightened risk for sexual misconduct, with people coming together for the first time, nervous, keen to make friends and unsure of boundaries in fledgling new relationships. Students considering higher education shouldn’t have to think about whether they will be safe from predatory or harassing behaviours.

Higher education can be a transformational experience in people’s lives. It can open up new opportunities to learn about yourself and others, as well as engaging in enriching and challenging academic study, of course. Students have the right to do this without facing significant risks of harassment and sexual misconduct. This means they need to be able to understand what their university or college is doing to reduce the risk of harassment or sexual misconduct and what they should expect if something does happen. This is why we have set out that we expect universities and colleges to have a comprehensive source of information about the policies and procedures they have put in place. Students understanding how to report issues, and feeling able to do so, will both support the individuals involved but will also ensure we have better data that allows us to see patterns and allow you to refocus work to reduce prevalence.

This is complex work tackling societal issues, and the causes and risks of harassment and sexual misconduct go beyond higher education. We know you know this. Colleagues in the room today and online are committed to addressing harassment and sexual misconduct in higher education settings and I am sure many will have been involved in this work since and perhaps before UUK’s Changing the Culture report.

Today I want to talk about our understanding of prevalence and the importance of measuring prevalence. I also want to spend some time going through some key aspects of condition E6, our regulation to tackle harassment and sexual misconduct in higher education.

Prevalence and data

To turn to the issue of prevalence first. Understanding prevalence is important because it highlights the scale of the issue and the way in which it affects students. We know that students experience harassment and sexual misconduct and that these issues matter to them. Ensuring that you have a better understanding of prevalence in your own setting will help you to take actions to tackle harassment and sexual misconduct.

However, before I go further into talking about what we know about prevalence, I also want to be clear that we know there are complexities around data too.

Data that points to an increased number of incidents may be the result of increased awareness of reporting mechanisms or trust in systems rather than reflecting an actual increase in prevalence. We know that students experience, and are concerned about, harassment and sexual misconduct so also very low reporting levels in large populations should give us all cause to question this data.

It’s important that we approach data thoughtfully – what is it telling us and equally importantly what might it be hiding? We expect you to also look beyond statistics and talk to students directly about their experiences; where are they most worried about their safety, do they know how to report, what does reporting feel like, who would they go to for support? It is also important to involve students in building your understanding of issues and ensure their input into designing and refining reporting tools, policies, training and support.

Sexual misconduct survey

However, data is a starting point. Our pilot sexual misconduct survey, published last autumn, found that 20 per cent of survey respondents reported having experienced sexual harassment, and 9 per cent unwanted sexual contact. This made for sober reading. We’re grateful to the institutions that volunteered to participate in the pilot, which allowed us and the sector to understand more about students’ experiences of sexual misconduct and reporting, and their experiences of intimate personal relationships between staff and students.

Sexual misconduct is a very sensitive topic to ask about in a survey. We designed the survey with the help of a group of experts, including researchers and professionals who work in the field. This group provided advice on what questions to include, how to design and carry out the survey, and how to handle ethical concerns. The team leading the project also consulted experts from the UK and other countries who specialise in measuring the prevalence of sexual misconduct, and gathered feedback from students. While students are naturally keen to understand how we will keep their responses confidential, some respondents have told us that they saw the survey as an opportunity to formally tell someone about an experience they had decided not to report.

You can find out more about the survey’s findings, what we learnt about the survey mechanism and the extent to which it met its aims, on the OfS website.

As you may have seen, we’ve acted on these learnings and launched a sexual misconduct survey for all final-year undergraduate students in England. The survey, which runs in tandem with the National Student Survey to reduce burden on students and providers, reaches nearly 350,000 students. This is the largest survey of its kind in England and provides a real opportunity to gain a breadth and depth of knowledge that we’ve never had before. By surveying students on a larger, national scale, we hope to understand the prevalence of sexual misconduct experienced by students, gain insight on how and where interventions might be targeted to tackle sexual misconduct, and test our approach to capturing prevalence data at a national level.

We plan to share the respective data with individual universities or colleges, where data quality is sufficient and student anonymity can be assured. We hope this will add to what you already know about your own students’ experiences and help refine your ongoing approaches. Our intention is to publish data from the 2025 sexual misconduct survey pilot at an aggregated level with analysis by student characteristics if possible. Following our evaluation of the 2025 pilot, we expect to re-run the sexual misconduct survey within the next couple of years. We will keep you updated on this and the future opportunities this increased data set provides.

Condition E6

On 1 August, the remaining aspects of the new condition to address harassment and sexual misconduct will come into effect. Condition E6 is designed as a framework, within which every university or college identifies what steps they need to take to make a significant and credible difference to students in their own contexts, while setting out some key requirements we expect all universities and colleges to meet.  These requirements include training staff and students, setting clear policies on intimate personal relationships between staff and students and a single comprehensive source of information for students; and ensuring that these are achieved in a way that is consistent with the free speech principles set out in the registration condition.

We’re clear about the outcomes students should receive from this work, outcomes we know you are already working hard to achieve. Students must be protected from abuses of power, have the information they need to recognise harassment and sexual misconduct and receive appropriate support, whether they are the reporting or responding students. This condition is built on existing practice, knowledge and evidence, and gives you the space to determine how you will deliver the outcomes for your own student cohorts.

Importantly, it’s a condition that is designed to not only address harassment and sexual misconduct where it does occur, but to seek to prevent it from it happening in the first place.

Last autumn, we ran webinars for students and staff at providers to discuss the new regulation. If you missed these, you can watch the recordings on the OfS website.

We have also had some really useful conversations with sector groups recently, which have helped us to understand how you are preparing for the condition coming fully into effect, to discuss common challenges and hear about developing approaches. Through these conversations a few common queries have emerged. I thought it would be helpful to use this opportunity to provide a few points of clarity.

Submitting information to the OfS

Firstly, do we require you to submit information to us? No, we’re not asking universities and colleges to submit information to us on 1 August about your policies. We are not asking you to regularly submit information to us, either. However, your comprehensive source of information must be published in a prominent position on your website and accessible not only to your current student community, but also those who may consider applying. As with our other ongoing conditions of registration, if we receive information indicating concerns about compliance with condition E6, we might engage with you to discuss this further and may at that point ask you to share a policy or other documentation that would help you to demonstrate your compliance.

Scope

We were also asked about the scope of the condition. To be clear, we are seeking to protect all students from harassment and sexual misconduct. This means two things, first that the condition applies to students at all levels of higher education study up to and including PhD candidates. Second, that the condition applies to all students regardless of where they are taught – including students taught in partnership arrangements or studying abroad whether temporarily or through a trans national education partnership arrangement.

This might mean that you need to collaborate with a partner college in designing your approach to tackling harassment and sexual misconduct. Ultimately, like with our other conditions, it is the responsibility of the registered provider to ensure that all students being taught in their programmes are protected by our regulatory conditions regardless of where they are taught. However, we also recognise that policies and support that are local to students will have the greatest impact – so it may be that support, training and policies are delivered locally in franchise arrangements and assured by the lead university or college.

We know that PhD students may also work as members of staff. They may be already in personal relationships with staff or may form relationships during their studies. Both of these factors will create particular nuances that will need to be considered.. Transnational partnerships as well as recruiting international students means that you will need to think about different countries’ laws and cultures as you work through how to protect your students from risks of harassment and sexual misconduct.

Definitions

We also had some questions about definitions. We have been clear that our condition doesn’t affect universities and college’s obligations under the Equality Act. We also want to be clear that the condition does not create a requirement for you to use a criminal standard of proof for your own internal investigations.

We have received questions about whether universities and colleges are able to add to or expand the examples of sexual misconduct included in the definition we’ve set out. The list of examples in the condition sets out the most serious behaviour, but it is not meant to be exhaustive. You are free to include further examples of misconduct in your policies, support or training, as long as this doesn’t conflict with the definitions we set out in the condition. You should also carefully consider the free speech principles and the wider free speech obligations that apply to the condition in developing any examples.

Student training

I wanted to expand a bit on our expectations relating to training students. We expect all students to be trained but you should use your judgement in relation to individual students who may have good reasons for not participating. If you put in place an exception system we would expect this to be well defined and proportionate – you would need to be able to explain why you have taken the decisions you have and how you have balanced the risks between individuals and the whole student population. You should be actively supporting students to participate in training. If you find that participation is low, we would expect you to be exploring whether additional support or adjustments to training would increase participation.

Training can be designed and delivered by your own staff or by a third party but it is your responsibility to make sure that the training meets the requirements we have set out. Training can be delivered online, in person or a combination of the two – you can decide this. But it is important to note that our requirements are not just that students receive training, but that this training leads to understanding, both of the content of your single source of information, and on behaviour which may constitute harassment and/or sexual misconduct.

Making a significant and credible difference

As I said before, this condition is not just about addressing harassment and sexual misconduct when it occurs. We also want universities and college to take steps to reduce the likelihood of these incidents happening in the first place.

We have asked you to make a significant and credible difference in protecting students from behaviour that may amount to harassment and sexual misconduct.

I also oversee the OfS’s work on equality of opportunity. Here, I have seen a clear commitment to innovation and collaboration in access and participation plans, as well as effective use of theories of change, and a focus on evaluation and commitment to evidence-informed practice. From Uni Connect partnerships I’ve seen the benefits of collaborating with other institutions and working locally to address issues faced by your communities. These approaches can be applied to your work to tackle harassment and sexual misconduct, too.

We encourage you to continue to evaluate and learn from your own and others’ practice in this space. Evaluating and implementing evidence-informed practice, analysing available data, understanding your student population and collaborating will equip you with the tools to continue to enhance your own approach. Engaging with your student population is an important step in developing a credible approach, and we gave a year between the publication of the finalised condition and when it comes into effect in August to support you in doing this effectively.

Our vision is clear - every student should be able to study free from harassment and sexual misconduct. Condition E6 reinforces our commitment to holding universities and colleges accountable for tackling these issues head-on, taking decisive action - not just in responding to incidents, but in fostering a culture where misconduct is neither tolerated nor ignored.

My colleagues, Nike, Emma and Julia have joined me here today so please do come and talk to us. I look forward to hearing more from today’s speakers and sessions on how together we can tackle violence, harassment and sexual misconduct in higher education.

Thank you.