Register of staff-student relations proposed for England campuses

Staff in undeclared relationships involving romance, sex or financial dependency liable for dismissal under regulator’s plans

Universities and colleges in England should require “personal relationships” between staff and students to be declared, with staff who keep relationships secret liable to be disciplined or dismissed, according to new proposals announced by the higher education regulator.

The Office for Students (OfS) also wants all students and staff in England to undergo mandatory training on sexual harassment and misconduct.

It’s not ‘wokery’ or snowflakes strangling free expression in universities – it’s the Conservative party | Kojo Koram

Students and academics know cancelling speakers is trivial compared with the structural collapse in tertiary education

• Kojo Koram teaches at the School of Law at Birkbeck, University of London

It was recently announced that the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is due to appoint the UK’s first “free speech tsar” in order to combat the apparent epidemic of cancel culture in England’s universities. At a time when the newspapers are filled with stories of strikes and shortages, and of the most vulnerable people in society having to endure extreme hardship, talk of the “death of free speech” must be like music to the ears of those in power.

For the best part of a decade now, column inches have been filled by claims that freedom of thought and speech is being strangled by “snowflake” students and overzealous academics. Routine annual changes in course materials to freshen up the syllabus are turned into moral panics about white authors being cancelled. Mundane invitation decisions by student societies are treated as if they form the lifeblood of British democracy.