Equality and Diversity Annual Report

Transcription

1 Equality and Diversity Annual Report November 2013

2 Content Page 1 Introduction 1 2 About Barking and Dagenham College 2 3 How we manage Equality and Diversity 3 4 Celebrating Equality and Diversity 4 5 HR and Recruitment 5 6 Progress on actions in Areas for development in Student Diversity Profile Staff Diversity Profile

3 1 Introduction Welcome to our Equality and Diversity Annual Report. As a public body, Barking and Dagenham College have a specific duty to publish EDI information on an annual basis under the Equality Act This report is intended to provide a transparent account of the progress that we have made in: Eliminating discrimination, harassment and victimisation Advancing equality of opportunity Fostering good relations between different people At Barking and Dagenham College, we are committed to advancing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Our core values include respect, social justice, widening participation and inclusivity. These core values are included in all College policies and recruitment materials, and in our appraisals process and self assessment process, staff members and teams are asked to assess their performance against these values and behaviours. We were very pleased to see that our commitment to EDI was recognised by Ofsted during our recent inspection visit in April The inspection report highlighted our success in eliminating achievement gaps, our activities to promote Equality and Diversity, and our outstanding support for all students, particularly the vulnerable and those needing significant additional help. Nevertheless, we always seek to raise the bar, and are continually setting new targets and identifying areas in which we can make further improvements. This report discusses the progress we have made during and looks forward to what we are hoping to achieve in the coming academic year. November

4 2 About Barking and Dagenham College Barking and Dagenham College is a large general further education college situated on the eastern boundary of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, approximately 11 miles east of central London. It caters for both adult and younger students. In 2012/13 the college enrolled approximately 12,813 students, including campus based students, work based students, apprentices and students studying at sub contracted partners of these students were enrolled on full time courses, and 9394 on part time courses. Around 54% of students were recruited from minority ethnic groups (including BME and White Eastern European students). 52% of students were female and 48% were male. 490 students received additional support for a learning difficulty and/or disability. An EDI profile of our students is included in Section 8. As of October 2013 the college employed 572 salaried staff. 411 of these were full time staff, and 161 were Part Time. We also employed around 87 agency staff, mainly in teaching roles. An EDI profile of our staff is included in Section 9. The college has held Investors in People status since 1995, and achieved the IIP Gold standard in autumn Our work in relation to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion must be viewed in the context of the local community which we serve. The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham has high areas of deprivation. Based on the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2010 the borough was ranked at 22, which places it in the top 7% most deprived boroughs in England. Within London, the borough is ranked 7th. The borough has amongst the highest child poverty rates in the country, over a third (38.3%) of children in the borough live in households receiving less than 60% of median income. Unemployment in the area is high with one out of every eight people actively seeking employment or training, making it the fourth highest in London. The proportion of students attaining five A* to C GCSEs including English and mathematics on entry to the college is below the average for similar colleges. Entry to higher education in the local area is lower than the national average. About 19% of Barking and Dagenham residents have no formal qualifications and, since the closure of the large manufacturing industries, the majority of firms, at least 82%, are small to medium, employing 10 people or less. The local population is growing at a significant rate, with the borough being one of the fastestgrowing in the country, and the borough has the highest population percentage of those aged 0 to 19 at 31% in England and Wales. 59% of the population is aged and 10% is aged 65+. In recent years, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham has attracted in migration particularly because of the availability of jobs in the construction sector as a result of the 2012 Olympic Games and the Thames Gateway regeneration programme. Local population profiling has shown that the Eastern European population is one of the most rapidly growing groups in the borough, and this is reflected in an increase of 70% for in this group of students over the last 3 years. 1 Enrolment information supplied by our CIS team on 13 October

5 3 How we manage Equality and Diversity Since July 2012, the Director of HR and Quality and Equalities Managers have been jointly responsible for providing strategic guidance and leading in the operational implementation of equality and diversity strategies across the college. Nevertheless, the 2012 Ofsted Common Inspection Framework emphasises that Equality and Diversity is not a discrete business support service, but a fundamental set of values that should be embedded across the educational provider as a whole, manifesting itself in outcomes for students, teaching learning and assessment, and the effectiveness of leadership and management. As such, the College recognises that the promotion and advancement of Equality and Diversity is everybody s responsibility. Monitoring of our policies and objectives is performed by the Equality and Diversity Committee (a subcommittee of the Academic Board), which is chaired by the Principal. The committee includes a student representative. This year we expanded our membership to ensure that every curriculum area was represented, and also to invite representatives from our subcontracted partners to get involved. This has resulted in an enriched discussion and improved communication of EDI initiatives to all staff. EDI issues inform college targets at all levels, including the overall college strategic plan. Currently, progress on short term and long term EDI targets is monitored through the Equality and Diversity Committee, the Investors In Diversity Steering Group, Academic Board and Corporation Performance and Standards meetings. Academic Board monitors success, retention, achievement and enrolment figures by equality and diversity measures for each curriculum area. Students disciplinary records and students complaints are also regularly reported and analysed to ensure indirect prejudice is not prevalent and there is no over representation amongst one particular group. EDI data is regularly distributed to Curriculum Managers and CTLs for analysis and monitoring, and enables us to set meaningful and measureable objectives in relation to Equality and Diversity. Several of our Equality Objectives for involved target setting to reduce achievement gaps between different groups of students. To date, we have been very successful in eliminating achievement gaps between different groups of students, an achievement which was noted by Ofsted in their recent inspection report. Currently, the overall success rate for BME students is at the same level as for white students, and most BME groups achieved success rates above the national average. The success rate gap between male and female students is narrowing, particularly so for 16 to 18 year olds where the success rate for male students is almost level with that for female students. The College initially published a Single Equality Scheme in 2011, which we intend to review next academic year. We publish our Equality Objectives annually on our website. These are agreed at the start of each academic year by our Equality and Diversity Committee, and progress is monitored via an action plan. The budget for EDI advancement is cascaded across different business support teams. For example, the budget for IID membership is allocated to Human Resources, the budget for Stonewall Champions membership is allocated to Quality and Transforming Learning and the budget for EDI training is allocated to Staff Learning and Development. This year we have worked closely with the Student Union to assist them to set up student discussion forums, including an LGBT forum, BME forum, International Forum and Disabled Students forum to strengthen the student voice around equalities issues. We produced an illustrated paper version of our Learner Voice Survey which resulted in improved participation from LDD and ESOL students. We also asked more specific questions about Equality and Diversity in our Learner Voice Survey. We were very 3

6 pleased to find that 97% of our students agreed that the College respected different cultures and identities, and that this positive response was consistent across ethnic groups, age groups and genders. Additionally, in our recent Staff Survey, 92% of respondents agreed that Equality of opportunity is embedded into the culture of the college. We continue to work with external agencies to improve our policies and actions in relation to EDI. The college has worked with DisabledGo to ensure that all areas of the college are easily accessible. Detailed access reports are available for each college building, including the new Green Technologies Building and Technical Skills Academy. In the college embarked on the process to gain Investors in Equality and Diversity kite mark status. We are currently working through an extensive action plan with the objective of attaining Phase 2 by January This academic year, the College has signed up to the Stonewall Champions programme, in order to further develop our equality and diversity objectives and clearly demonstrate our support for LGBT colleagues and students. In recent years we have worked with the Metropolitan Police NE Cluster, and local Youth Offending and Probation Services, to successfully pilot an information sharing protocol. This has enabled us to support youth offenders to access and achieve success in mainstream education, whilst maintaining a robust risk assessment process to ensure other learners, staff and visitors are not put at risk. Since 2010 we have seen a 120% increase in disclosure by ex offenders and a retention rate of 82% for this group of students. There is a well understood anti bullying and harassment policy in place in the College and analysis shows that all cases of harassment, bullying and discrimination are thoroughly investigated, appropriate action taken and reported regularly. Amongst staff, three Anti Bullying and Harassment Officers were appointed in , and trained by ACAS to act as mentors to other members of staff. 4 Celebrating Equality and Diversity Frequent themed events and celebrations help to raise awareness of a wide range of equalities issues amongst the College community. In our programme included thought provoking installations to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Dyslexia Awareness Week, Deaf Awareness, LGBT history week, IDAHO Day and International Women s Day. Our ALS team participate in annual fundraising activities for Jeans for Genes day to promote awareness of genetic disorders this year we raised 170. The ALS team also work with a number of our LDD students every year to raise money for Children in Need. In , funds of around 500 were sent to the charity as a result of these activities. The Communication Support Workers provide a Sign of the Week YouTube clip, which is linked to the Daily Bulletin, to encourage staff to communicate with the growing number of Deaf / hearing impaired students accessing education. In , our E&D Committee members took turns to provide equality themed Did you know? facts to the Daily Bulletin newsletter, and these often became a talking point for staff and provided ideas and themes that could be incorporated into lessons. In order to keep up the momentum in , the Quality and Transforming Learning team have put together a cross college EDI events calendar, and have asked all members of the E&D Committee to commit themselves to at least one event or awareness campaign. So far, committee members have put their names to events to celebrate Diwali, Nigerian Independence Day, International Women s Day, the International Day of Religions, Autistic Pride Day and Ramadan. 4

7 5 HR and Recruitment EDI disclosure rates for staff have increased during the past year. Employees are able to access their own data on line through the HR self service system, and self declare under the appropriate EDI categories. Employees have been encouraged to do this through a data verification process, which is still on going. Disclosure rates for sexual orientation remain low, and we hope to improve on these in by working with Stonewall and participating in the Champions scheme. Recruitment The College currently engages in a number of different recruitment strategies to improve the EDI profile of our staff. We have successfully evened out the age profile of employees in recent years by creating more posts for apprentices, as a result of which the proportion of our employees below the age of 30 has significantly increased. This has ensured that the age profile of our workforce more closely mirrors the demographics of the local area (see p2). All job adverts now positively state that we welcome applications from BME applicants due to under representation, and we continue to advertise all posts in The Voice, and all management and senior business support posts with the Network for Black Professionals. Over the past year, BME appointment rates have increased significantly, and most recently reached 22.2% of all staff (including agency workers). Currently, 42% of our Senior Management Team are of black or minority ethnicity. This year a high proportion of our recruitment campaigns attracted disabled applicants. Most recently, 32% of disabled applicants were shortlisted for posts, and 25% were appointed. The College has raised its two tick status profile by placing promotional adverts in publications such as REHAB, Re new, Right to Work and Living with Disability (publications aimed at a disabled readership). All vacancies are advertised on the Diversity Group Directory s website. This is aimed at a diverse range of candidates. Equal Pay We conduct an Equal Pay Audit every two years. Our most recent audit took place in June The audit compares the salaries (including London weighting) our employees receive by Grade, Mode of Employment, Gender, Ethnicity, Disability and Age. Pay and salary scales The College has adopted the Association of College s (AOC) pay scales which has been negotiated nationally and benchmarked against salaries in the further education sector. Salaries are clustered according to job roles and are on pay grades with incremental spinal points. All staff are able to access the spinal points within their salaries grades subject to successful achievement of annual targets 5

8 Annual Cost of Living Award The College normally implements the annual cost of living pay rises as recommended by the AOC. This is applied to all staff and the pay scales accordingly. It is normally paid within the academic year, but backdated to 1st August. a) Pensions All staff have access to the pension schemes which are contributory pension schemes (both employee and employer). Teachers Pension Scheme for the teachers and Managers involved in Teaching/Learning and Assessment. Local Government Pension Schemes for all other staff. Staff are automatically enrolled into these schemes as appropriate, unless they choose to opt out. Both schemes are based on final salary benefits. b) Holidays Entitlements are as follows: 25 days annual leave for Support Staff and 35 days annual leave for Managers and teaching staff. In addition to this there are 8 bank holidays as well as up to 8 days efficiency days which are normally used over the Christmas when the College is closed.. Outcome of Audit: Our Equal Pay audit found that, as a College as a whole, women in Full Time roles were on average paid 5.5% less than males, but that this gap narrowed to 3.2% for Part Time employees. However, when looked at on a grade by grade basis, women are paid equally to men as the College conducts a job evaluation on all BSS and Management roles and roles are paid in accordance with the duties for each role. Most women are employed in business support roles, compared to teaching or management roles. The salary scales for business support roles in comparison to management and teaching role are lower. BME staff earned an average of 8% less than White staff overall, but in Management roles, BME staff earned 9% more than White staff. Again, within individual grades, BME staff are paid equally with white staff across all grades and the analysis indicates that there is a high proportion of BME staff in high level leadership roles. Staff with a declared disability earned 9.6% less than other colleagues when taking the College figures as a whole, although the current low disclosure rate amongst out employees may mean that this figure is inaccurate. However, it must be highlighted that within individual grades, disabled employees are paid equally to non disabled employees due to evaluation of individual roles. The College is currently addressing equal pay issues by: Continuing to ensure a non discriminatory approach to Recruitment and Selection Continuing to ensure that any market supplements are objectively justified Continuing to monitor the effect of national pay agreements / spines Ensuring that work life balance policies are in place to support our equality work Continuing to use the Job Evaluation Scheme to check the validity of grades and evaluate posts Continuing to improve our equal opportunities monitoring systems and data 6

9 Staff Complaints According to our records, no staff complaints have been received in respect of discrimination in relation to any of the protected characteristics in the past year. Maternity and Parental issues We have Maternity and Paternity, Adoption and Parental Leave Policies which reflect current legislation and promote work life balance. In the last 2 academic years, 6 employees have taken maternity leave, and only one employee has left employment following maternity leave. Applications for flexible working requests are carefully considered on a case by case basis. From the next academic year, HR will start to capture and report on data related to flexible working. 6 Progress on actions in At the start of we set the following Equality and Diversity Objectives: Learner Experience 1. Success rate for White British students to increase by at least 3% 2. Success rate for White British 19+ students to increase by at least 2% 3. Success rate for White & Black African students to increase by at least 2% 4. Success rate for all Asian students to increase by at least 2% 5. Equality and Diversity to be embedded in teaching and learning 6. Wide range of enrichment activities and cross college events to meet the needs of the learner demographic Staffing 1. Gain re accreditation for Disability two ticks through job centre plus 2. Equality and Diversity data analysed and monitored for employees and applicants 3. Implement measures to increase BME staff from 17% to 20% 4. Implement measures to increase BME management spine staff from 14%to 18% 5. Implement measures to increase disabled applicants and staffing 6. Implement measures to encourage disclosure under sexual orientation; religion/belief and disability Investors in Diversity 1. To achieve stage 2 in Investors in Diversity 2. Online Equality & Diversity training to be completed by all staff 3. Raise awareness of E & D issues through additional targeted training with specific curriculum and Business Support teams 4. Further develop partnership with external stakeholders to ensure they are aware of college E & D requirements and college activities and events We have met or exceeded all the objectives, except two. We are still in the process of achieving stage 2 Investors in Diversity, and have a review date booked for January We have carried over the embedding of Equality and Diversity into our action plan for Our action plan and evidence grid for IID provides an extensive and detailed account of what we have achieved in the past academic year in relation to EDI, and interested parties should contact the Quality and Equalities Managers for further information. 7

10 7 Areas for development in Increase visibility and improve monitoring of LGBT students We currently have no data on the sexual orientation of our students, and therefore we cannot say with any certainty how many LGBT students we have, and how they perform academically. We also do not have a strong LGBT student voice channel. Although an LGBT student forum was set up earlier this year, we need to try harder to get more students involved. This year we will work closely with Stonewall to increase the confidence and visibility of our LGBT students. Our aim is to be in a position to capture data on student sexual orientation by the start of the academic year. 2. Increase visibility and improve monitoring of LGBT staff Our staff sexual orientation disclosure rates are currently low: at present only 1% of our employees declare any form of non heterosexuality, and these numbers are too low to be significant for monitoring purposes. We hope that our work with Stonewall with help us to increase disclosure rates and identify more ways in which we can support our LGBT colleagues. 3. Embedding of E&D consistently across the curriculum In we updated our staff E&D training. All staff, governors, partners and some management students were required to take an online training programme which covered all protected characteristics, and included separate modules on Disabilities and Managing E&D. We organized sessions on embedding E&D for teaching staff, both during the staff training day and as bite size sessions. Nevertheless, our recent Ofsted report highlighted that more work needs to be done to make embedding consistent across all curriculum areas. We have planned a complete CPD training package to improve this aspect of Teaching and Learning, including training sessions provided by external organisations, supported experiments groups based in curriculum areas, Open Door weeks (i.e. peer review) and Learning Walks. We will also produce a glossary of EDI terminology to support teaching staff and improve confidence. 4. Better clarity on issues of faith and religion This year our Equality and Diversity Committee identified that our policy on faith and religion required updating. All Faiths and None attended one of our meetings to help us kick start this project, and a Faith Working group is currently being convened to discuss and progress issues such as the future of the Prayer Room and the wearing of religious dress in the classroom. 5. Better understanding of the issues faced by our Black Caribbean and White Mixed Heritage male students Nationally, Black Caribbean and White Mixed Heritage male students are one of the groups most likely to perform poorly at school or drop out of education early. A project group has been set up to look at the issues faced by this group of students at our College, and will begin work in September. A detailed research plan and timescale have been finalized and presented to the Equality and Diversity Committee. 8

11 8 Student Diversity Profile 2012/13 Data supplied by our CIS team on 13 October Student Ethnicity 1% White Other 10% White British 46% Student Ethnicity Unknown Asian 15% Black 21% Other Mixed Heritage 2% 5% Asian Black Mixed Heritage Other White British White Other Unknown Ethnicity No. enrolments % enrolments Asian / Asian British % Arab % Bangladeshi % Chinese % Indian % Pakistani % Asian Other % Black / Black British % African % Caribbean % Black Other % Mixed Heritage % White and Asian % White and Black Caribbean % White and Black African % Other Mixed Heritage % White % White British % White Irish % White Other % White Traveller 4 0.0% Unknown % Other Ethnic Group % 9

12 8.2 Student Gender Student Gender Male, 48% Female, 52% Female Male 8.3 Student Age by Group Student Enrolments by Age % 27.8% 17.6% 15.3% 8.8% 2.3% 1.1% 0.2% Student Disabilities / Learning Difficulties 4% 5% Disability Learning Difficulty 96% No Disability 95% No Learning Difficulty 10

13 Disability type Visual Impairment 28 Hearing impairment 35 Mobility 41 Other Physical 36 Medical Condition 119 Mental Health 89 Profound complex 2 Asperger s Syndrome 21 Multiple Disabilities 26 Other 99 Total With Disabilities 494 Number of students with a disability and a learning difficulty = 202 Learning Difficulty Type Moderate Learning Difficulty 214 Severe Learning Difficulty 26 Dyslexia 278 Dyscalculia 9 Other Specific learning Difficulty 22 Autism Spectrum Disorder 22 Multiple Learning Difficulties 16 Other 85 Total With Learning Difficulties Staff Diversity Profile 2012/13 All data taken from our Bond HR Professional Database in October Staff Ethnicity BME 21% White 79% All Staff BME 22% White 78% White 58% BME 42% Management Senior Leadership Team 11

14 9.2 Staff Gender Female 51% Male 49% All Staff Male 59% Female 41% Female 67% Male 33% Management Senior Leadership Team *According to our records there are currently no transgender staff employed by the College. 9.3 Staff Age Profile % 26.7% % 14.2% % 6.8% 2.5% 0 < >65 12

15 9.4 Stafff Disability 9.5 Stafff Sexual Orientation Prefer not to state 65% Heterosexual 34% Gay / Lesbian Bisexual 0.5% 0.5% 9.6 Stafff Religion / Belief % 30% % Christian 1.6% 0.5% Hindu Jewish 3.8% Muslim 0.9% Sikh 5.8% Other None Prefer not to State 13