1. Mainstreaming Equality and Inclusion FOR everyone
Hello everyone
My name is Helen Leitch and I am the Equality and Diversity Adviser at Perth College UHI.
I am delighted to have been asked to come along to the conference today to showcase and share with you how we are Mainstreaming Equality and Inclusion in the college in Perth - especially being on home territory!
For many of us in public sector organisations, 30th April 2013 will still be very much emblazoned on our foreheads as we were required to publish our Equality Reports and Mainstreaming Plans for by that date. This included a set of Equality Outcomes stating our plans over the next 4 years for further embedding equality and inclusion in all functions of our organisations.
In Perth we created 5 Equality Outcomes which could probably be described as high level outcomes as underpinning them is a Mainstreaming Plan which started with around 83 actions and which seems to be growing as we move forward!
What I would like to do today is give a brief overview of each of our outcomes and to share with you some of the highlights and challenges that we have experienced so far on our journey to further mainstream equality and inclusion.
Presented by: Helen Leitch
13th March 2014
Perth College is a registered Scottish charity, number SC

2. Our Equality Outcomes
Strong leadership and accountability of equality and diversity

3. Our Equality Outcomes Highlights: Board of Management
Senior Management Team
Equality and Diversity Adviser
Equality and Diversity Leaders
Challenges:
competing staff pressures
part time/temporary staff
measuring effectiveness
Highlights:
I think we will all agree that it is absolutely crucial to have support from the top
Engagement Committee – chaired by a member of the BOM - responsibility for Equality and Diversity within their Terms of Reference
SMT – Director of HR and Communications – Equality Champion
Equality and Diversity Adviser role – seconded from my lecturing post and so I am fortunate in that I have been able to use my cross college knowledge to combine roles
Equality and Diversity Leaders – Learning and Teaching Leaders – one allocated in each Curriculum Area - to help recognise and gather good practice and to disseminate information among teams and provide appropriate advice and support.
Because of this leadership and support we have been able to further develop policy and practice and E & D is being given a profile through Staff Conference Days and through training and awareness sessions for staff and students including for Board of Management and Managers at all levels.
Challenges:
Although there is backing from SMT to promote E & D through training etc this is yet another pressure for staff and students to take on board – confidence needs to be developed
Ensuring that part-time/temporary ie hardest to reach staff and students are aware of their responsibilities under equality legislation
Measuring effectiveness

4. Our Equality Outcomes
2. Staff knowledge and understanding of equality and diversity

5. Our Equality Outcomes Highlights: staff development and training
Challenges:
competing pressures on staff
engaging hard to reach staff
measuring effectiveness
Highlights:
As I said previously there has been support from Senior management to role out a programme of CPD for all staff in relation to Equality and Diversity.
This has included
interactive workshops around our current mainstreaming of E & D
Rolling out a programme of EIA training
Updated our mandatory online training - Diversity in the Workplace
Offered a variety of SIGs – Buttle UK young care leavers/dyslexia/age concern/LGBT/
Intranet – resource bank of supporting materials and links
Working in conjunction with the students association and our Spiritual Care Team to promote ‘special days’ eg cultural events, interfaith and belief, HMD, LGBT history month
Under development:
World Host Training – Service Across Cultures/Customers with Disabilities
developing in house online training for EIA and E & D in general
developing our community engagement work following consultation undertaken when developing our Equality Report
Challenges:
Competing pressures on staff to attend training and awareness raising events
Often same staff who have an interest in equalities attend and embrace training offered and so a challenge to engage others
Measuring effectiveness

6. Our Equality Outcomes
3. Disclosure and monitoring of student and staff protected characteristics

7. Our Equality Outcomes Highlights:
now collecting data an all 9 protected characteristics
Challenges:
to encourage more staff and students to disclose
making good use of the data collected
Highlights:
College decision made to collect data on all 9 protected characteristics for both staff and students
Important that everyone could make an informed choice as to whether or not to disclose on what is clearly sensitive information
Information leaflet – Collecting and analysing staff equality data - attached to staff pay slips to help staff to make an informed decision around disclosing data
Information leaflet for students sent out with acceptance letters to those students who would be enrolling online/made available to students enrolling on site
Challenges:
21% of staff disclosing
59% of students disclosing – all enrolments
74% of FT students disclosing - online
At the moment we are collecting student data at enrolment and staff data as part of an HR procedure and this gives us an overall picture of the makeup of our college community but we now need to consider further ways of using the data effectively

8. Our Equality Outcomes 4. Students:
awareness and understanding of equality and diversity
participation, retention, attainment, and progression into employability
progression and achievement of high quality learning outcomes

9. Our Equality Outcomes Highlights:
building equality and diversity into the curriculum
awareness events across college
Challenges:
venues/timings
competing pressures on staff
measuring effectiveness
Highlights:
We feel it is really important to help our students to develop not only subject specific skills but also their own skills around e & d and so have looked at a variety of ways of supporting students to do this
Through Personal Development Planning:
Adapted SQA Skills Framework SLLW: to include Equality and Diversity
Considering the 3 needs of the general duty
Rights and Responsibilities
Not just responsibility of Personal Academic Tutors and lecturers but also through engagement in the wider college eg Student’s association awareness events as previously mentioned
Student representation on our equality team – feeding back to students on progress
also linked of course to our outcome around staff knowledge and understanding of equality and diversity as this then hopefully feeds in to the learning teaching and assessment processes
Challenges:
To have more students engaging in the activities being made available to them
Timings/venues
Competing pressures on staff to include a wide variety of topics into PDP sessions
Measuring effectiveness

10. Our Equality Outcomes
5. Equality of opportunity for all staff across all protected characteristics
and in relation to recruitment, staff development, promotion and other employment practices – for all employees and for all applicants

11. Our Equality Outcomes Highlights: Gender Pay Gap
Disability Symbol – Positive about Disabled People
Challenges:
to lower the pay gap further
Highlights:
Our gender Pay Gap has been reduced reduced from 12.21% which was the published figure April 2013 to 10.07% and is likely as a result of introducing the Living Wage and a flat rate increase for the lower graded in the College salary structure.
We continue to retain the Disability Symbol - Positive about Disabled People showing our commitment to disabled staff members
Challenges:
currently carrying out research to investigate if occupational segregation around our lower grades contributes to the gender pay gap and what we can do about it, as at the higher grades women are well represented.

12. FOR everyone
Fairness
Opportunities
Respect
FOR everyone