OfS opts for summaries and secrecy on sexual misconduct

To ensure the most robust data collection possible, OfS has been asking students’ unions to promote the survey by raising awareness of what it is, how to complete it, and its importance and objectives – whilst ensuring that those who may be emotionally impacted are signposted to the appropriate support services. Students as partners and all that.

It has even recommended that students’ unions use its information to develop comms on their social media and/or webpages about the survey to inform their student community – it wants SUs to encourage as many students as possible to complete it.

(I know it’s a little thing – but the same webpage says it is asking “all final year students” to complete it – it means final year undergraduates. That’s also a danger when the results come out.)

One of the questions that’s been lingering in the air ever since the OfS announced has been publication – in the usual run of things we get to see provider data (by registering and teaching provider) and subject (as long as the relevant participation thresholds are met).

That opened up the prospect of a league table on sexual misconduct prevalence – which depending on your point of view would have been a valuable bit of sunlight disinfectant, or a significant and problematic distortion of reality.

Either way a while ago OfS quietly updated its webpage on the pilot with some new answers to FAQs – one of which says that “where possible” it plans to publish data from the pilot aggregated at sector level with a breakdown analysis of the data by student characteristics:

As the SMS is a pilot survey distinct from the NSS, we do not plan to publish provider-level data at the same time, nor will data appear as part of the 2025 OfS-published NSS dataset.

It’s not immediately clear why its status as a pilot should prevent publication within the usual release – although a separate webpage says this:

We will evaluate the 2025 pilot survey and then decide when we should next run the sexual misconduct survey – we’re currently planning on the basis that this is likely to be in 2027. We may then publish data for individual institutions from the 2025 pilot survey alongside that new 2027 data, so that results from both surveys can be viewed together.

That can be read a couple of ways. The straightforward way would be that OfS is giving providers the opportunity to improve between 2025 and 2027. Others might surmise that announcing an intention to publish in the future is one of the available exemptions (section 22) of the Freedom of Information Act.

Whether that holds both within OfS and at provider level is one question – another is providers seeing the data.

On that, OfS says:

Where it’s possible to protect students’ anonymity, we plan to share with institutions their own 2025 pilot data so that it can support any local initiatives on this important issue.

That makes lots of sense – although one that it does raise is whether those SU partners will also get to see the data.

Some will panic that that will mean their results will be made public. Others will sensibly treat their SU as a partner and give them the sort of access to the data that they facilitate in general for NSS data.

That’s been a sore point for a while – in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, SUs have their own accounts to access the NSS data portal, but in England a dedicated super user can manage access to other users including SUs.

The question, then, on this dataset in whatever form it comes to universities, is whether OfS will encourage providers to share it with SUs. And on that, all it could tell me was that it will take a decision on that once it has completed the pilot and seen the data.

That will feel a lot like “partners when we promote but not when we analyse”, but maybe we need to wait and see.

One thing that is for sure is that the survey will generate data that should cause considerable consternation inside providers – both on prevalence (of misconduct type, misconduct setting, victim characteristics and perpetrator) and the gap between prevalence and formal reporting.

The Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) has today published a helpful casework note and set of case summaries on complaints in this space, and has announced an intent to consult on a new section in its Good Practice Framework which will fill in some of the gaps in the new OfS E6 condition, which is actually pretty light on complaint and panel processes.

Notwithstanding the “two sources of standards” issue, of course students do need to complain to start with – and one thing I’ve been surprised to not see much discussion on so far is provider attempts to understand that gap and seek to close it. There’s nothing stopping providers working with their SU now on researching students’ confidence to complain, and where there are weaker confidence levels, taking targeted action to close them.

Results over the summer are unlikely to be timely enough to drive change in time for September, so the time to act is now.

The thing about “confidence to complain” is also crucial in the context of hazing and initiations. You can do all the training and warning in the world – but the Telegraph’s piece on incidents in Rugby clubs this week, other than the lurid details you get in these stories, is most alarming when it gets to the social ostracising for the “snitch” thing.

Because of the OfS survey focus on sexual misconduct, there’s a real danger that racial harassment and the other forms of bullying and harassment now picked up in E6 don’t get the (preventative) attention they deserve.

One other thing that’s been coming up a lot in my conversations concerns placements (and, to some extent, years abroad and franchised providers). The general mood music on all sorts of issues concerning partners – whether it’s those that help “sell” courses, those that deliver teaching or those that operate placements – is that it’s the provider that remains responsible.

The question then is what the responsibilities – and associated processes – are if a student experiences sexual misconduct (or other forms of harassment) on a ward, in a school, in a law firm or on a year abroad or whatever.

It’s not as if it would be straightforward (or even, in some cases, possible) for a provider to investigate other staff (or in some cases other providers’ students) directly. On the other hand, it’s not clear that providers have taken steps to establish confidence that those partners will both prevent and process allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct to the same standards (including all the training duties) expected inside the provider itself.

And of the 10-15 policies already reviewed and revised “in light of E6”, the issue couldn’t be less clear.

OfS hasn’t been especially clear either. In E6 “staff” includes but is not limited to “employees and contractors”.”Relevant staff member” means a member of staff who has direct academic responsibilities, or other direct professional responsibilities, in relation to that student.

Does that mean a placement supervisor on a ward or not? And this is in classic OfS-vague:

Addressing harassment and sexual misconduct of students carried out by individuals who are neither staff nor students would be consistent with compliance with the condition. A provider may have less influence over harassment and sexual misconduct by individuals who are not students or staff of the provider.

Providers should consider what sort of action is appropriate for addressing harassment and sexual misconduct in different contexts. For instance, an incident may occur outside of the provider context where the provider has no, or limited, ability to prevent this. However, the provider should still be able to take significant and credible steps to protect students through supporting those who experience harassment or sexual misconduct even if this takes place outside of the provider context.

The reality is that an initial reading of the above on “limited ability” and “outside of the provider context” surely meant a student experiencing misconduct in a pub in town from a member of the public or something – not something that could happen on placement or on a year abroad.

This all matters partly because students are surely in some of their more vulnerable situations in those sorts of contexts, and partly because of some of the OIA case summaries today are on things like students not being told the outcome of a complaint about staff. See also the requirements on NDAs, which those partners may not want to or realise will have to apply to them too.

It certainly feels like the sort of thing likely to come through in those results when providers get them – and something worth attempting to scenario plan and bottom out now. Ideally, in partnership with students.