Over the past year, NUS Women’s Campaign has been actively working on the issue of staff-student harassment in UK universities. The recent launch of our report, ”Power in the Academy: sexual misconduct in UK higher education”, is a huge step in uncovering the patterns of power and abuse in higher education - and it provides a long overdue look at the experiences of students in this sector.

This is the first research of this scale on this issue in the UK and provides insight into what many of us with experience of HE already knew - that HE is an environment where casual misconduct, harassment, and sexism are rife. Sexualised and sexist behaviours are embedded in HE - as they are in wider culture. We also believed it was important to start with HE, in the first instance, because students aged 18 and over do not currently have statutory protections. This is despite the fact that there are circumstances that can drastically increase vulnerabilities, such as students having recently left home.

Staff sexual misconduct

This is part and parcel of what is a unique dynamic between staff and students in HE, which means that there are aspects of sexual misconduct that are very much specific to this setting. In particular, it is the power relations between staff and students, where some staff are de facto gatekeepers to academic progression, coupled with the uncertainty of boundaries, which enables staff-student misconduct.

Our research found that more than four in 10 respondents had experienced at least one instance of sexualised behaviour from staff, and that one in eight had been made to feel uncomfortable by a staff member touching them. We found that 65 of our survey respondents had been sexually assaulted by a staff member, and 15 had been seriously sexually assaulted or raped.

Not only this, but these patterns of experience are clearly gendered. Women and LGBT+ students were more likely than men and heterosexual students to have experienced most forms of misconduct, with LGBT+ women reporting the highest instances of misconduct. Furthermore, women were more likely than men to suffer greater consequences as a result of misconduct, including impacts on mental health, learning and career prospects. Of those respondents who experienced sexual misconduct, a fifth of women reported losing confidence in themselves while just under a fifth experienced mental health problems.

Universities ‘failing students’

We also found that higher education institutions are failing their students, with 90 per cent of respondents who reported their experience feeling like their institution’s response was inadequate in some way. For years, we have been fighting for survivors to be centred in our discussions and responses to sexual violence. It is clear that the mechanisms in place to address staff misconduct and support survivors are woefully inadequate at best. At worst, institutions are placing their own reputations above the safety of their students. Universities must do better on all counts - both on addressing incidents when they arise, and on changing the culture that enables this to happen.

This research does not stand in isolation. It is made possible by the years of work that NUS Women’s Campaign has carried out on women’s experience of sexual violence in higher education. We have spent years lobbying and campaigning for the government and higher education sector to take sexual abuse seriously, to prevent abuse from happening and to support those who are affected. It is because of these efforts that significant progress has been made in uncovering the pervasive problem of sexual harassment and abuse at universities.

FE students’ experiences

However, when it comes to further education, it’s a different issue altogether. We know not nearly enough about the experiences of further education students when it comes to sexual violence, and this is a huge gap that must be filled. This is why I’m partnering with Emily Chapman, NUS’ vice-president for FE, to conduct our first ever research into this issue. We are doing this because there is a gap in our understanding of sexual misconduct in FE, but also because we need a wider strategy to start addressing sexual harassment from a much earlier age.

In recent years, there has been particular (and welcome) attention given to challenging harassment in HE, but another effective approach might be to look at how we shape norms in FE - before students reach university - such as normalising conversations on consent and challenging norms on gender. However to do that, we will need to get a snapshot of the experiences of FE students in the here and now.

Sexual violence is a continuum which exists throughout society, where the normalisation of low-level sexual harassment paves the way for more extreme forms of violence. Women’s particular experiences of violence do not exist in isolation but are connected to the entirety of their experiences as women. That is why it’s so important that our research will be broad, so as to encompass the whole spectrum of students’ experiences.

Duty to protect

On top of what we know about women’s experiences in higher education, research has suggested that sexual violence is commonplace in schools and colleges. The 2016 report by the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee on sexual harassment and violence in schools evidenced that 29 per cent of 16- to 18-year-old girls had experienced unwanted sexual touching at school, whilst 59 per cent of 13- to 21-year-old girls and women said they had faced some form of sexual harassment at school or college in the past year.

It is clear that further education students are not exempt from this problem. For far too long, they have slipped through the cracks when we talk about sexual violence. Just as we lobbied and campaigned in higher education, we must do the same in further education to ensure that this issue is given the priority it needs. The government and further education institutions have a duty to protect their students - and we need to make sure they do so.

Our research will be the first step on this road. We need to understand and prevent sexual violence, harassment and abuse in all its guises, and everywhere it happens. In further education, it’s long overdue.

Hareem Ghani is the NUS women’s officer, and Emily Chapman is the organisation’s vice-president for further education