Equalities Action Planning: Shifts and Continuities

1
Equalities Action PlanningShifts and
Continuities

• Dr Meena Dhanda
• HLSS Equality Diversity Coordinator
• 29 April 2008

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Beginning with Race Equality Action Plan

1. Area Activity
2. Outcome What we want to achieve
3. Action What we will do
4. Time-scale By when
5. Impact High/Medium/Low
6. Persons/group responsible Who will ensure that
   it happens
7. Monitoring Who will judge achievement or lack of
   it
8. Follow-up What we intend to do next

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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Area Activity in REAP

• Organised around Student Life Cycle
• Marketing
• Open days
• Admissions
• Induction and Enrolment
• Teaching, Learning and Assessment
• Student support and Guidance
• Progression
• Employment Opportunities

• Staff Experience
• Advertisements and Job Descriptions
• Short-listing candidates and Interview Panels
• Induction of new Staff
• Staff Development Opportunities
• General
• Culture and Communication
• Community links

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HLSS Equality Diversity Action Planning

• New format, potentially covering all equality
  strands
• Race, Disability, Gender, Sexuality, Religious
  Belief, Age
• Using indicators of success from the University
  Equality and Diversity Strategy, working towards
• A diverse staff (not just ethnically diverse)
• A diverse student body (not just ethnically
  diverse)
• Consolidate and embed the Schools response to
  developments in the national diversity and
  equality legislative framework
• Equivalent levels of satisfaction for all groups
  of students
• Good progression rates for all categories of
  student

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Shifts and Continuities

• Plan not organised sequentially over student
  life cycle, even though still covering aspects
  of marketing, induction, teaching and learning,
  student support, employability etc.
• More closely aligned with University ED Strategy

• New HLSS Equality and Diversity Group
• All aspects of student life cycle covered
  by/through the membership of EDG, including
  representatives from all School Committees and
  Student representation from the student council
• Impact Assessment now over all strands

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Where do we go from here?

• Retain action priorities from REAP
• BME progression seminar
• Analysis of Staff recruitment
• Broaden scope of ED action planning by building
  in action priorities to gradually cover all
  strands
• Foster staff awareness of LGBT issues
• Train Staff to make teaching, learning and
  assessment inclusive by increasing awareness of
  learning needs relating to disability

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Conclusion

• Readjustments to policy making and implementation
  are the concomitants of institutional measures
  seeking compliance with Government legal
  directives. They are not the whole story.
• Mere compliance does not produce an ethos of
  genuine equality and diversity, but merely a
  simulation of it.
• Our analysis of what we are doing right and
  correcting our wrongs must aim beyond compliance
  with legislation
• We must genuinely engage with understanding
  diversity whilst recognising the limits of such
  engagement