Should applicants know the prevalence of sexual misconduct at the providers on their UCAS form?

As ever, it says that when it means all undergraduate final year students. As we noted here, it’s a reasonable hypothesis that there might be a set of specific concerns surrounding, say, international PGTs, or PGRs’ confidence to report. And it’s only final year UGs – a reaction to a bad experience early in your course may well be to leave university.

To the extent to which the data might end up public, it’s likely to give a distorted view of the student body’s experiences in the same way that the NSS does now.

The sexual misconduct survey will follow the National Student Survey (NSS). Students can complete the sexual misconduct survey immediately after they have submitted their NSS response. And although they share the same survey platform, OfS says that the two surveys are “entirely separate”. Only they’re not, really, are they?

The exercise builds on earlier pilot work – not the Savanta polling it did that found 10 per cent of students had had a relationship with a member of university staff in the last year, half of which said the staff member is/was involved with their education and/or assessment.

The other one, that was run in ten providers (none in the Russell Group) which found that one in five students experienced unwanted behaviors of a sexual nature (sexual harassment) and 1 in 10 of students experienced unwanted sexual contact (assault/violence) across an academic year.

We do now know the questions that are going to be asked in the 2025 pilot. Comparing the imminent pilot with the pilot pilot, the 2025 survey is shorter, with an estimated completion time of 10 minutes compared to 15 minutes.

Specific questions about locations (e.g., library, lecture hall, sports facility) and individuals involved (e.g., lecturer, student) have been simplified. The 2025 version asks more general questions, focusing on whether incidents occurred inside or outside a university setting without providing the level of detail present in 2023.

The 2023 survey asked detailed follow-up questions about the impact on academic performance, well-being, and social behaviours (e.g., skipping lectures, changing modules, suspending studies). These detailed questions on impact don’t seem to be featured at all this time around.

The 2023 exercise included detailed questions about support services accessed, reasons for not seeking help, and types of support. By contrast, the 2025 version only briefly asks whether the student sought support and their general experience with the reporting process.

2023’s survey also explored relationships with staff, including dependencies (emotional, financial, romantic). This section has been considerably trimmed down in the 2025 version, with fewer questions about the specifics of these relationships​. It also appears to have removed or condensed follow-up questions that were about abuse of power.

And the last version explored students’ confidence in understanding where to seek support and the barriers to reporting incidents in more detail. The 2025 survey retains a simpler version, focusing on overall confidence levels without detailed barriers or concerns.

That may well all be reasonable given the evaluation and length of the 2023 exercise. There have also been some concerns re ethics and triggers – OfS says:

In developing the questionnaire, we’ve carefully considered research ethics and drawn on international best practice in prevalence surveys in higher education. We have consulted with students to test the comprehension and readability of the questions and their suitability for a wide audience.

The questionnaire will carefully flag sensitive questions and students will be able to skip those questions, sections or choose not to take part. The survey will also contain links to national support services, and local support from providers where available.

What we also still don’t know is how, when or the level of detail that will come with publication arrangements – and whether a bleak new league table is coming.

When it was announced that the 2025 exercise would take place, OfS told us that there is a “presumption” that it will publish full data – response rate concerns along with that student body coverage issues abound.

If it was to decide not to provide the same level of detail as we get in the NSS, some will breathe a sigh of relief – but arguably, universities and their students need to know this stuff to act on it.

It’s also not at all clear why an applicant should be encouraged to take the result of “How good are teaching staff at explaining things” into account in their subject area at their university (which plenty use in adverts and so on) but not this stuff.