Summary the Sheffield College Single Equality Scheme 2012 - 2015
Single Equality
Scheme
2012 2015
Summary – The Sheffield College Single Equality Scheme 2012 - 2015
The Single Equality Scheme is the College's document that strives to state the College's commitment to equality and diversity and outline in a clear, transparent way its strategies and actions to address issues and remove barriers. We have decided to create a single document that brings together the requirements of the various equality areas, as opposed to producing separate schemes relating to individual equality strands.
Vision
"Across the college there is a clear focus on supporting vulnerable learners and examples of case studies show the positive impact of support strategies on individuals with multiple barriers to learning." - Ofsted April 2012
Equality and diversity will be the lifeblood of The Sheffield College.
Our commitment
Critical to our vision and our values is our commitment to transform lives through outstanding education and training for all in our City Region. We will step up our determination to eliminate unfairness wherever we find it. We will address discrimination directly and relentlessly pursue the creation of a culture that does not tolerate it in any form.
Our approach
We will redouble our efforts, building on our track record, with a new Single Equality Scheme supported by detailed Quality Improvement and an Equality and Diversity Action Plan.
We will tackle barriers and unequal experiences for people across the following equality strands:
§ age
§ disability
§ gender reassignment
§ marriage and civil partnership
§ pregnancy and maternity
§ race
§ religion or belief
§ sex
§ sexual orientation
The College will also recognise socio economic status (or class) due to it being a major barrier for a very high proportion of our students. Although not covered by the 2010 Equality Act, we will refer to this as a 'Valued' characteristic.
Through our work to create a more diverse and equal College for The Sheffield City Region, we will focus on three main aspects:
Widening participation and increasing opportunities - we will provide outstanding teaching and learning that promotes success and progression for all of our students and
stakeholders. We will address under-representation of particular individuals and groups and work tirelessly to remove barriers so that all can benefit and participate from our courses and services.
Outcomes - We will systematically identify underperformance by particular individuals and groups, working tirelessly to remove barriers, as well as facilitate and enable all to reach their true potential. We will aim to close equality gaps are ensure they are narrowed as far as possible in terms of success and progression.
Creating a tolerant and inclusive College - we will constantly improve our organisation so that it becomes ever more tolerant and inclusive. We will combat unfair and unlawful discrimination wherever it arises. We will promote our values of tolerance and fairness at every opportunity.
We will underpin all of the above with simple, accessible equality documents. We will publish these documents and report annually progress against them.
Values
The College has clearly outlined its values in its Strategic Framework 2012 - 2015. These are:
§ Integrity
§ Innovation
§ Inspiration
§ Inclusiveness
§ Involvement
Applied to Equality and Diversity we interpret these values as follows:
§ Integrity: ensuring all of our operations are conducted with honesty, transparency and are communicated effectively. We want people to feel included, valued and able to express themselves in the way that they want when they do not.
§ Innovation: we want to use sector strategies and actions to improve outcomes and remove barriers to our learners that are evidence- based and ambitious.
§ Inspiration: we want our staff to be able to inspire, motivate and support our students to aim high and achieve their full potential, regardless of the background of each individual member of staff or student.
§ Inclusiveness: programmers that reflect the community we serve, that celebrate diversity promote empathy and value difference. We want our student and staffing bodies to reflect their backgrounds.
§ Involvement: we want to hear the voice of all that can offer support or who have a stake in what we are trying to achieve. This will mean engaging representative groups and listening to the voice of all our stakeholders.
Key Aims of our Single Equality Scheme
v Systematic identification and elimination of all equality gaps in student and stakeholder recruitment / engagement, success, progression and satisfaction rates.
v Strengthened teaching and learning, course content and classroom practice that engages all and promotes and celebrates our diversity.
v Review and strengthen policies, procedures and practices that tackle all aspects of discrimination and address barriers to opportunity.
v The development of robust equalities meetings that drive improvement, promote good practice, stimulate debate and ensure accountability.
v Through the Organisation and People Development Strategy, the progressive achievement of proportionate representation of all equalities groups in the College and especially in our management structures.
Current context at 2014-15
The Sheffield College Workforce Profiles
The profiles below are reflective of a total workforce of 1221 staff.
Gender
At the start of the academic year 2014-15 64% of Sheffield College employees are female and 36% male. The same figure was reported at the start of 2013-14.
When analysed by job family, females are the majority group in all categories of staff. However, in leadership and management professionals job families the proportions are almost equal. This represents a shift from the previous position in 2013-14 where leadership and management team were 60% male and 40% female.
Job Family / Gender %Male / Female
Leadership / 49 / 51
Management Professional & Specialist / 48 / 52
Administration / 15 / 85
Lecturers / 45 / 55
Student & Learning Support / 33 / 67
Technical Operations / 33 / 67
Age
In 2014 the category with the highest number of staff are within the age range 45-54. The next category being aged 55-64. This represents a significant shift from the previous year where the age range 55-64 was the category with the highest number of staff.
The age distribution differs between job categories. The leadership and management professional age profiles show a positive bias towards older staff; the administration and student support categories show a somewhat more even distribution.
Job Family / Age %18-21 / 22-34 / 35-44 / 45-54 / 55-64 / 65+
Leadership / 0 / 11 / 30 / 49 / 10 / 0
Management Professional & Specialist / 0 / 9 / 20 / 37 / 34 / 0
Administration / 5 / 15 / 19 / 29 / 27 / 5
Lecturers / 0 / 13 / 19 / 31 / 34 / 3
Student & Learning Support / 2 / 22 / 19 / 32 / 25 / 0
Technical Operations / 2 / 12 / 19 / 36 / 29 / 2
Ethnicity
The College‘s ethnicity profile compares with the Sheffield Census data. 16% of college staff are from a minority ethnic group. This represents an increase of 6% from 2013-14.
The leadership and main grade lecturer group categories are more or less in line with the whole college data. The management and professional family, and the administration family are much less diverse.
Job Family / Ethnic Groups %Majority / Minority / Not Known
Leadership / 81 / 17 / 2
Management Professional & Specialist / 94 / 4 / 2
Administration / 93 / 4 / 3
Lecturers / 83 / 15 / 2
Student & Learning Support / 77 / 10 / 13
Technical Operations / 88 / 12 / 0
Disability
The whole College’s disability profile has varied little from 2013-14. There remains an issue about the high proportion of staff who do not disclose this information: 41%.
The percentage of unknowns increases as the job grades increase. Combining management and professional with leadership, 73% are unknown, 26% declared no disability and only 1% declared a disability, learning difficulty or mental health.
Job Family / Disability %Learning difficulty, disability, mental health / None / Not Known
Leadership / 0 / 48 / 52
Management Professional & Specialist / 1 / 17 / 82
Administration / 2 / 60 / 38
Lecturers / 4 / 57 / 39
Student & Learning Support / 5 / 57 / 38
Technical Operations / 4 / 52 / 44
Sexual Orientation
The majority of staff do not provide information about their sexual orientation. As the data below shows 44% declare heterosexual orientation, 1% declare lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender orientation and 55% do not provide the information.
2014 is the first year this information has been reported on.
Job Family / Sexual Orientation %Heterosexual / LGBT / Not Known
Leadership / 38 / 0 / 62
Management Professional & Specialist / 40 / 0 / 60
Administration / 48 / 1 / 51
Lecturers / 43 / 1 / 56
Student & Learning Support / 48 / 2 / 50
Technical Operations / 34 / 1 / 65
The Sheffield College Student Profiles
The profiles below are reflective of a total number of 17353 students.
Gender
The College’s student gender profile shows a greater percentage of female students to male as shown below.
Ethnicity
The student ethnicity profile shows a higher representation of students from minority ethnic groups compared to the Sheffield Census data (33% compared to 15%). The largest ethnic minority groups in order are Mixed other, Black African, Asian Pakistani, White other, Asian other and Mixed Black Caribbean.
Learning Difficulty & Disability
The percentage of students who have declared a learning difficulty and /or disability has reduced slightly from 14% in 2013-14 to 13% in 2014. The numbers of students with high needs, however has increased significantly.
Equality gaps in the success rates of different groups of students
Equality gaps between BME and White British students closed in 2011-12 (from -6 percentage points difference in success in 2010-11 and -8 percentage points for Long programmes) to no difference for both All Lengths and Long programmes. In 2012-13 a slight equality gap in favour or BME students arose and this has continued in 2013-14 (White British students’ success rate on Long Programmes overall is 80%, with these students excluded the overall success rate is 82%). This is largely due to the very high success rates on ESOL programmes, where students are predominantly from BME backgrounds and there are large number of enrolments. However, at Level 3, a gap has arisen of 3% points in favour of White British students in 2013-14. The College’s strategies to reduce equality gaps (focusing on identifying and supporting vulnerable learners) remain effective as equality gaps remain relatively small.
The Qualification Success Rate Report’s measure for 16-18 year olds indicates that the following groups perform less well than the average for the College (77.5%) or than White British students (77.8% with 10,352 starts): Bangladeshi students (75.8%, although with only 120 leavers); Caribbean (70.5% with 166 leavers); Pakistani (70.8% with 610 starts – the largest BME group); White and Black Caribbean 72.7% with 333 starts); Any Other Mixed / Multiple ethnic background (74.6% with 181 starts). All other groups performed better than the average or had very small numbers.
For adults, the average rate of 83.1% was similar to that for White British students (83.8% with 17,923 starts). Pakistanis adult students performed almost as well as average (83% with 1,092 starts), as did Arab adult students (82%, 681 leavers) and White and Black African (84% with 701 leavers). Bangladeshi adult students performed better than the average (88% with 188 leavers). The following groups performed less well than this: African (80% with 1,579 leavers); Caribbean (80% with 873 leavers); Other Black African/Caribbean (75% with 276 leavers); Other Mixed / Multiple ethnic background (76.9 % with 156 starts).
Other groups of students continued to achieve as well as their peers particularly for students with a disability or health issue on mainstream courses. Those with learning difficulties / disabilities (LDD) performed almost identically to those that didn’t (for 16-18 students’ success rates were 77.6% - 4,657 leavers - for those with and 77.5% - 9,223 leavers - for those without. For adults success was 82.9% - 4,411 leavers - for those with and 83.2% - 23,350 leavers - for those without LDD). This demonstrates that the College offers a high level of support for those with additional needs.
An evaluation of the different types of disability indicates, however, that those with hearing / visual impairment and those with mental health difficulties underperform, although with 251 and 299 leavers respectively compared with 13,889 overall, this needs to be explored further but treated with caution. For adults, those with mental health difficulties performed slightly less well than their non-disabled counterparts (80.2% - with 642 leavers - compared with 83.1% for the 23,350 without a disability) as did those with visual impairment (74% with 292 leavers). The 271 adult students with hearing impairment, however, unlike their 16-18 year old hearing impaired counterparts, performed well with a success rate of 87%.
Although overall those with learning difficulties did as well as other students, 16-18 students with specific learning difficulties underperformed. Those with dyscalculia and dyslexia did less well than they have done in previous years, with similar numbers of leavers. The 148 16-18 year-olds with dyscalculia had a success rate of only 70.9% and those with dyslexia one of 75.9% compared with the 77.5% overall rate. This was not the case for adult students with these conditions, who performed at a similar level to their peers without learning difficulties.
Overall, males and females performed almost equally as well as each other in 2013-14, females on Long programmes with an overall success rate of 80.5% and males at 80.6%. However, at Level 3 females outperform their male counterparts by almost 3% points, which needs to be addressed. Also, adult female students performed better than male students, opening up a 1.7% gap in success.
Responding to emerging need