Equality and diversity in access agreements
Why do I have to include equality and diversity in our access agreement?
OFFA does not regulate whether you meet your legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010, but the Act’s public sector equality duty requires you to take equality issues into account when designing policies (including internal policies) and services, and to review such issues regularly.
Therefore, when designing new access agreements or amending an existing agreement, you will need to demonstrate how you have taken equality issues into account. This should include any evidence you have on the possible equality implications of any proposed changes, and what steps you will take to remove or minimise any adverse effects.
OFFA does not give legal advice. If you are unsure whether you are meeting your legal obligations under the Equality Act, you should seek your own legal advice, or contact the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
How should I embed equality and diversity into our agreement?
Under the Equality Act 2010, you must have due regard to the need to:
- eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act
- advance equality of opportunity between people who share a ‘protected characteristic’ (see below) and those who do not
- foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
The protected characteristics recognised by the Act are:
- age
- disability
- gender reassignment
- marriage and civil partnership
- pregnancy and maternity
- race (including ethnic or national origin, colour or nationality)
- religion or belief (including lack of belief)
- sex
- sexual orientation.
People who share protected characteristics can be under-represented in overall numbers, more likely to leave before finishing their course, less likely to achieve the highest qualification classifications and less likely to be employed after graduation than those who do not.
Many universities and colleges already recognise some of these issues for protected characteristic groups within their widening participation strategy but often do not link this to their work to meet the requirements of the Equality Act. As noted in the Action on Access briefing Social mobility through higher education: aligning widening participation and equality, most higher education institutions target disabled and black and minority ethnic (BME) students as part of their widening participation strategy but of these, only half make an explicit link between this and their institutional equality and diversity strategy.
Many opportunities for aligning your equality and widening participation strategies exist. For example, BME and disabled people are statistically over-represented within lower socio-economic groups and low participation neighbourhoods. Given that activities targeted at those from lower socio-economic groups and low participation neighbourhoods count towards your access agreement spend, this may provide an opportunity for you to link your widening participation and equality strategies, meeting both your equality objectives and access agreement targets.
Do I have to include targets relating to equality and diversity?
We encourage you to consider including targets on improving equality and diversity in your access agreement. You will have published equality and diversity data in January 2012 to comply with the Equality Act 2010, and this could be used to help set targets along with national benchmarking data, such as that contained in the Equality Challenge Unit’s (ECU) Equality in Higher Education: Statistical Report 2011. When setting equality targets, you may wish to consider the following:
- To maximise use of resources and minimise duplication, targets around equality and diversity may be aligned with objectives you are developing for the Equality Act 2010 relating to student access, success and progression.
- If you are including a target in relation to disabled students, you should consider whether a target based on the Higher Education Statistics Agency’s (HESA’s) indicator of students who receive Disabled Students’ Allowance is the most appropriate measure. For example, if your institution is already meeting its HESA benchmark, and you don’t plan to increase this proportion, you may wish to explore different indicators of disability.
- Students with different impairments face different barriers to access and student retention and success, so you may wish to consider whether your targets account for this. For example, as well as setting broader disability targets, you might consider what support a student with a mental impairment may need, separately to what support a student with mobility and physical impairments may need.
- Some ethnic groups or sub-groups are well represented in higher education generally, while others are under-represented. Any targets you include relating to ethnicity should take into account which ethnic groups or sub-groups are under-represented in your institution. For example, at a national level, women of Bangladeshi heritage are under-represented in higher education, but this may not be the case in every institution.
- You may wish to explore whether there is a difference in retention and attainment by students who share protected characteristics such as ethnic group, sex or disability, and set targets accordingly. For example, at a national level, male students are more likely to withdraw from their course and black students are statistically the least likely to achieve a first class or 2:1 honours degree (source: ECU Equality in Higher Education: Statistical Report 2011).
- Detailed analysis of your data may identify under-representation or issues around retention and attainment of students who share a protected characteristic in certain subject areas which you may wish to address in your targets. For example, nationally women are less well represented in engineering, technology and some science subjects (source: ECU Equality in Higher Education: Statistical Report 2011).
Further guidance and resources on equality and diversity
The Action on Access briefings Social mobility through higher education: aligning widening participation and equality and Mainstreaming widening participation and equality in institutions may be useful.
To help you identify relevant priorities for your institution, you may wish to compare the internal equalities data you collect with sector-wide trends. There are also other data sources which may be of use such as:
- HEFCE publication 2010/13 Profile and progression of entrants to full-time, first degree study
- HESA
- Higher Education Information Database (Heidi) equality data
- the ECU’s publication Equality in higher education: statistical report 2011 Part 2: Students.
If you need further help developing priorities and activities, you may wish to contact an external organisation such as the Equality Challenge Unit which is funded by the higher education sector’s representative bodies and UK funding bodies to advise universities and colleges on equality issues. You may count any expenditure invested in such services under your access agreement.