Eliminating Harassment in Higher Education
The Office for Students is introducing new requirements for institutions to protect students from harassment and sexual misconduct.
It comes with a pilot survey that found 20% of students have experienced unwanted sexual behaviour, with nearly 70% of these occurring in a university setting or involving someone connected to the university.
Whilst the higher education sector’s approach to tackling harassment and sexual misconduct has come a long way in the last decade, the statistics are clear; higher education institutions are still not doing enough to eliminate harassment on campus.
Universities play a pivotal role in shaping the world we live in – the experiences people have and the behaviours they learn in higher education influences how they engage in the workforce and organisational culture, which makes the new regulations vitally important.
The Office for Students (OfS) introduced Condition E6 to regulate how higher education institutions (HEIs) in England prevent and address harassment and sexual misconduct.
Exceeding Regulations: OFS Regulation Guidance White paper
Our white paper explores ways to tackle bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct, going beyond the regulations to improve student experience and shape the future workforce.
This white paper covers:
- Changes in the UK higher education sector’s response to bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct
- How our higher education partners meet and exceed the Office for Students’ new regulatory requirement E6: Harassment and misconduct
- Beyond the regulations – acting on anonymous reporting, publicly publishing your data and data prevenance to eliminate harassment and sexual misconduct.
The implications for Higher Education governance
To comply with the OfS regulation on harassment and sexual misconduct, institutions must meet several key requirements.
- Provide a comprehensive, easily accessible single source of information outlining how students can report incidents, what constitutes unacceptable behaviour, and the support available. This source should include minimum content on institutional policies, case handling and support.
- Demonstrate adequate capacity and resources to address harassment effectively. This includes allocating staff and financial resources to manage reporting systems, investigations, and support services. Compliance with freedom of speech principles is also critical, ensuring that institutional policies on harassment do not conflict with lawful expressions of free speech.
- Uphold freedom of speech. Institutions must comply with the requirements of the condition in a manner which is consistent with the freedom of speech principles.
- The discontinuation of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in cases related to harassment and sexual misconduct, as these agreements can obscure systemic issues.
- Manage the risk of personal relationships between students and staff, implementing policies and producers that minimise the risks of an abuse of power.
- Staff and students are appropriately informed to ensure understanding. This will include communicating the above-mentioned single source of information effectively to all, induction sessions ensure staff and students understand behaviour that may constitute harassment and/or sexual misconduct. Provide training to relevant roles and ensure it remains up to date.
Webinar On-Demand: OfS Condition E6 Regulation
Watch our recent Exceeding Regulations: OfS Condition E6 Regulation webinar, where we share a clear breakdown of the OfS Condition E6 and what it means for your institution, insights from leading institutions on how they’re tackling harassment and misconduct and the practical steps you can take to strengthen reporting, support systems, and staff training.
Creating safer places of study
Culture Shift empowers universities to take proactive steps in student and staff well-being. Discover how we're helping
Examples of how our higher education partners use Culture Shift to tackle bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct
We’re proud to support our higher education partners, helping them go above and beyond the regulations to eliminate harassment and we’re excited to share with you some amazing pockets of progress they are achieving, in the hope to inspire you to achieve this too.
- University of Bristol – The University of Bristol have used Report + Support for six years as a comprehensive approach to addressing bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct, including a community induction module.
- Birmingham City University – BCU have used Report + Support for four years, recently adapting their platform to add Freedom of Speech concerns as a reporting category, along with supporting material.
- London School of Economics – a more recent Higher Education partner, Report + Support is providing their EDI team with data insights to help them scale up their student training on harassment and sexual misconduct.
- The University of York – we’ve worked with the University of York for over four years and they use Report + Support highly effectively, using the anonymous reporting data to intercept and disrupt particular behaviours.
We delve deeper into a range of case studies further in our report, exploring how our partners use Report + Support to address unacceptable behaviour, creating more inclusive universities.
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