Safeguarding duties for under-18 students

Overview

There is no single statute that imposes a comprehensive, school-style safeguarding duty on universities in England and Wales in respect of their students. Instead, a university’s obligations towards a student under 18 arise from a combination of general child protection law, its common law duty of care, sector regulation, and certain specific statutory duties that apply to particular activities. The practical result is that most universities adopt safeguarding policies that treat any student under 18 as a child requiring additional protection, even though the university’s legal position is different from that of a school or further education (FE) college.

It is worth noting at the outset that a student characterised loosely as being “owed a safeguarding duty” is not necessarily in the same legal position as a child at school. The distinction matters, and I explain it below.

The statutory child-protection framework

Anyone under 18 is a child under the Children Act 1989, regardless of being enrolled in higher education. That triggers the wider safeguarding architecture set out in the statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children.

The key statutory safeguarding duties that apply to educational institutions are narrower than many people assume:

Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 places a duty to make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children on local authorities, governing bodies of maintained schools, and governing bodies of FE institutions. Crucially, in the case of FE institutions this duty applies only in relation to students who are under 18. Higher education institutions are not listed in section 175, so this particular statutory duty does not apply to a university simply because it teaches some under-18s.

The Education and Training (Welfare of Children) Act 2021 extended equivalent safeguarding duties to independent training providers, 16 to 19 Academies and certain other post-16 settings, but it did not bring mainstream universities within a school-style statutory safeguarding duty for their degree students.

The consequence is that a university generally does not owe the specific section 175 style statutory safeguarding duty, but it remains bound by the general legal framework that applies to any organisation working with children, and by its own published policies. Some universities state this expressly. Cardiff University’s policy, for example, records that it does not have statutory safeguarding duties but nonetheless maintains a safeguarding policy and will report suspicions or allegations of abuse to social services.

Common law duty of care

Independently of the child-protection statutes, a university owes its students a common law duty of care. That duty is heightened where the student is a child. In practical terms this means the university must take reasonable steps to protect an under-18 student from foreseeable harm arising from the university’s activities, premises, staff and arrangements. Where the student is a minor, what is reasonable is judged with the student’s age and vulnerability in mind, so the standard expected is higher than for an adult student.

This is why universities that admit under-18s typically put in place additional measures such as restrictions on accommodation, supervision arrangements, limits on activities involving alcohol, adjusted disciplinary processes, parental or guardian contact arrangements, and a designated safeguarding lead.

The Prevent duty

Under section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, universities in England and Wales are specified authorities and must have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. This duty applies to all students, but where an at-risk individual is under 18 it interacts directly with child-safeguarding processes and referrals. The Office for Students (OfS) monitors compliance with the Prevent duty in the higher education sector.

DBS checks and regulated activity

Where staff carry out regulated activity with children, the university must comply with the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) requirements. Teaching, training, supervising or caring for children can constitute regulated activity, and it is an offence to allow a barred person to carry it out. Whether a particular role amounts to regulated activity depends on the frequency and nature of the contact and whether the activity is supervised, so this needs to be assessed role by role. Where a university admits under-18s, it should identify which staff roles amount to regulated activity and obtain the appropriate level of DBS check.

Office for Students expectations

The OfS, as the regulator for higher education in England, expects registered providers to have appropriate safeguarding arrangements, particularly where they admit students under 18. Failure to have adequate arrangements can be relevant to a provider’s ongoing conditions of registration and to student protection. This is regulatory rather than a free-standing statutory child-protection duty, but it is a significant practical driver of university safeguarding policy.

Other relevant duties

Several further duties commonly bear on under-18 students. Health and safety law under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 applies to the university’s premises and activities. Data protection law under the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 affects the handling of a child’s personal data, including the sensitivities around sharing information with parents or guardians. Licensing law restricts under-18s in relation to alcohol on licensed premises, which affects student accommodation and social activities. Where the university provides accommodation to a child, additional care and supervision arrangements are usually required, and in some circumstances contractual and welfare arrangements need parental involvement because a minor’s contractual capacity is limited.

What this means in practice

For a student under 18, the realistic position is that the university will not have the full statutory safeguarding duty that a school has, but it will owe a heightened common law duty of care, will be subject to the Prevent duty and DBS requirements, will be regulated by the OfS, and will almost always have its own published safeguarding policy that it is expected to follow. If a university fails to follow its own safeguarding policy, that failure can be relevant both to a negligence claim and to a complaint.

If you are asking because of a specific incident, the answer will turn heavily on the facts, so it would help to know: the university involved; the nature of the concern (for example inadequate supervision, an assault, a data-sharing issue, or a failure to act on a disclosure); whether the university has a published safeguarding policy and whether it was followed; and whether harm has resulted.

Practical next steps if you have a concern

1. Obtain the university’s safeguarding policy and its policy for students under 18, which most institutions publish online, and identify the designated safeguarding lead.

2. If a child is at immediate risk, contact the police or children’s social care directly rather than waiting for the university.

3. Gather and preserve evidence, including dates, communications, and the relevant policy wording.

4. Raise the matter first through the university’s safeguarding or complaints procedure in writing, setting out what happened and which duties or policies you say were not met.

5. If the internal complaint is not resolved, a student in England or Wales can escalate to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA), and concerns about a provider’s safeguarding arrangements can be raised with the OfS. Data-handling concerns can go to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

6. Where harm has been caused by a failure to take reasonable care, a claim in negligence may be possible, but that is fact-sensitive and depends on establishing duty, breach, causation and loss.

If you tell me the specific situation you are dealing with, I can give a more targeted answer on which duties are engaged and the strongest route to pursue.