By Nancy Birney, Head of Equality and Inclusion, Glasgow Clyde College
EQUALITY remains a hot topic of conversation. It is a subject that is increasingly scrutinised and reported on across the globe from private to public sector.
The passing of the Equality Act 2010 brought together many pieces of relevant and related legislation, including race, disability and gender equality, which were already in existence. The introduction of Public Sector Equality Duties (PSED) followed and provided a welcome focus and framework for mainstreaming duties, including advancing equality of opportunity, eliminating discrimination, harassment and violence and fostering good relations by tackling prejudice and promoting understanding.
Education institutions welcomed the changes. They brought about significant positive change and provided a common approach towards common goals. There was less focus on discrete cohorts of people and there was more scope to promote equal opportunities for everyone, based on protected characteristics. However, in recent years, ongoing developments around the way equality action is delivered means we are potentially losing focus on our goals and what we are aiming to achieve.
The PSED in Scotland has demanded an increasing volume of reporting on a prescribed basis. In addition, the Scottish Funding Council asks every college to provide a gender action plan and to develop an access and inclusion strategy with related action plan. These overlap with the requirements of the PSED, as does the recently published British Sign Language legislation and socio-economic duty. During this academic session, a race equality network has been established to work towards a race equality plan. It’s likely there will also be a future need to produce a separate disability equality plan.
It seems there is a growing level of duplication across all these areas and, with no additional funding or capacity made available, colleges have had to address this need for increased reporting as best they can from existing resources. In addition, this siloed approach to reporting means we are no longer looking at equality as a whole, but fragmenting each strand of inequality. It would appear protected characteristics are emerging singularly again and are competing for priority.
As a further education institution, we know that embracing diversity promotes creativity and innovation and helps to attract and retain the best talent, areas which are vital to our existence and success. Further education provides a wonderful, and in many ways, unique opportunity to provide lifelong learning to a wide variety of students of different ages and with significantly different and often challenging backgrounds. To meet the needs of such a diverse student population, staff need to understand and embrace the wide range of cultures and complex individual needs that are increasingly encountered.
Glasgow Clyde College is committed to promoting and protecting everyone’s right to equal opportunity and we understand that we must report on the performance of our policies and practice in this area. However, we also recognise there is a danger of positive change being compromised and eclipsed by the growing volume and complexity of equality reporting for specific characteristics.
Instead of fragmenting individual strands, it would be fairer and more beneficial to identify an efficient process that aligns all aspects. An extension to the reporting cycle would also allow colleges more time to effectively advance and evidence progression of their equality outcomes.
These approaches could help to ensure that we do not regress and that inequality doesn’t become an unfortunate and inadvertent result of establishing equality.
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