OfS expands analysis of reported sexual misconduct experiences

Updated Sep 07, 2026

The Office for Students published supplementary analysis of its 2025 sexual misconduct survey on 8 May 2026. It adds detail on student groups and study contexts to the September 2025 release. The survey covered NSS-eligible undergraduates in England, excluding postgraduate students. OfS announcement.

What the findings describe

The earlier headline estimates were 24.5% reporting sexual harassment and 14.1% reporting sexual assault or violence since entering higher education. The additional analysis describes variation by characteristics including subject and disability type. These are reported survey experiences, not an assessment of individual providers’ arrangements or an explanation of why differences occur.

The report describes poorer experiences of formal assault-reporting processes among respondents with cognitive or learning difficulties, a mental health condition, or multiple or other impairments, compared with those with no reported or unknown disability. It also reports lower confidence in finding support among some disability groups.

OfS explicitly cautions about limited response, uncertainty and small subgroup sizes. Questions about reporting concern people who experienced an incident, while support-confidence questions were asked of all respondents. Those denominators should not be confused. Report, methods and reporting sections.

The announcement describes plans for another survey in 2027 and combined institution-level publication from the two cycles. Those are stated future plans. This release did not itself create a new regulatory condition.

Reviewing sensitive evidence locally

Our practical suggestion is to distinguish prevalence, reporting, experience of the reporting process and awareness of support. A low incident count in a reporting system does not establish a low prevalence in the student population.

Decide whether each proposed breakdown is appropriate and sufficiently robust before making a comparison. National subgroup patterns cannot establish the circumstances of an individual student or the performance of a particular institution.

Involve the institution’s safeguarding, support and data protection specialists when reviewing sensitive material. Do not assume that case records, anonymous survey comments and representative feedback can be merged for a new purpose. Set clear boundaries for access, reporting and any response to an individual concern.

The governance checklist offers planning questions; it does not replace specialist incident handling or establish that sensitive records are suitable for commercial comment analysis.

Review note, 7 September 2026: checked the announcement and relevant report sections, clarified population and denominators, and removed causal and product claims that exceeded the evidence.