Tackling Sexual Misconduct and Harassment of University Students

Universities UK, the representative organisation for the UK's universities, has published its report into the work universities are doing to tackle sexual misconduct and harassment of students.

The new report Changing the Culture: One Year On – based on research carried out by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (LFHE) – assesses the sector's progress in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in implementing recommendations from the Universities UK Taskforce's report Changing the Culture.

The study was based on in-depth research with a sample of 20 institutions, designed to reflect the different types of universities.​

Key findings:

• Whilist some signficant progress has been made, it is not consistent across universities.
• The key difference between those universities which have made progress and those which have not, appears to be the level of commitment and drive to tackle these issues by senior leaders.
• Where reports of misconduct and harassment have increased, institutions report that this reflects a change in culture, leading to students feeling more able to report and perhaps more confident that their complaints will be handled appropriately.
• Sharing good practice is key to continuing to make improvements across the sector.
• Tackling hate crime and hate-based harassment tends to have a lower priority status compared with efforts to address student sexual misconduct
• There is less evidence of new prevention and responsive strategies being developed to address staff-to-student sexual misconduct in the same way as those addressing student-to-student misconduct
• Centralised systems and processes for collecting and recording data on sexual misconduct, hate crime and hate based harassment remain underdeveloped areas across this sample
• The HEFCE's Catalyst safeguarding funding of £2.45m has accelerated and supported change across England's higher education sector
• Institutions report barriers to progress in areas including sustainable funding for resources, training for students and staff across larger institutions and maintaining a consistent approach across the sector

Professor Dame Janet Beer, President of Universities UK and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, said "It's encouraging to see that significant progress has been made at many universities. Despite this, clearly more needs to be done. There should be a greater focus on tackling staff to student sexual misconduct, hate crime and hate-based harassment.

"Ultimately, a long-term commitment by senior leaders will be vital to ensuring further progress in making our universities safe places to live, work and study. We owe it to our staff and students to accelerate the pace of cultural change."