Mainstreaming Equality in UHI Orkney

Mainstreaming equality means integrating equality into the day-to-day working of UHI Orkney. This means taking equality into account in the way UHI Orkney goes about its business as a provider of education.

As UHI Orkney is not an incorporated College and UHI Orkney staff are OIC employees, many of the actions that are being taken to mainstream equality cover all the Council’s work and therefore UHI Orkney. Orkney Islands Council Mainstreaming Report can be found at http://www.orkney.gov.uk/Council/C/Equality-and-Diversity.htm

This section details specific steps which relate to UHI Orkney.

Strategic Aim 1 for UHI Orkney is to

• ‘To provide a diverse range of high quality education, training, and research to meet market needs and encourage participation within an inclusiveness agenda’. Objectives include-
• ‘To continually review the further education (FE) and higher education (HE) portfolio and to promote diversity and inclusion in all its contexts'

An example of working towards the above is that over the last 2 years two new full time courses have been added to our portfolio of courses which accommodate students that need to study at access 2 and 3 level and/or disaffected young people. Extra staff, resources and facilities have been secured to support the courses.

UHI Orkney continues to work in partnership with local secondary schools to help provide a curriculum that suits every pupils’ needs and to have a major role in the pupils achievement of a positive destination when leaving school.

The ethos for the Curriculum for Excellence is adopted by the College and all F/T FE course are linked to the achievement of 4 capacities of the CfE.

UHI Orkney Staff

Staff of UHI Orkney are committed to monitoring and reviewing progress in delivering our Equality Outcomes for the promotion of equality and diversity across the organisation. Ongoing staff development will be undertaken to support staff to achieve the above.

The Student Voice

UHI Orkney undertakes with students an annual questionnaire titled ‘Promoting Equality for All’ Students help to develop the questionnaire to help ensure understanding by students when they complete it. This is now an embedded procedure within College and the information gained from these questionnaires is used to inform practice to ensure equality for all students.

There are other mechanisms for students to put their ideas forward or raise issues, either anonymously via suggestions boxes or at course review meetings and /or UHI Orkney cross College Committee Meetings. UHI Orkney demonstrates its support to encourage students to attend committee meetings by offering a financial incentive.
Developing and implementing ways to secure the student voice remains a major objective within UHI Orkney.

Student Support

Student support is available to all who need it for their studies. It is offered to all so as not to stigmatise anyone who receives it. Partnerships with other agencies enable UHI Orkney to be able to offer counselling to our students who would benefit from it. Evaluation of the support given is undertaken annually and any changes thought necessary to improve the service is made.

Senior Staff from the UHI Orkney sit on the Orkney Equality Forum. This forum work closely with partners within the Orkney Community Planning Partnership where Orkney Equality Forum has responsibility for national outcome 7 in our Single Outcome Agreement with the Scottish Government: We have tackled the significant inequalities in Scottish society.

Staff from UHI Orkney also sit on the UHI Equality and Diversity Group.

UHI Orkney has an Equality and Diversity Committee made up of staff from across the College and student reps. This committee feed directly into the College Management Team.

Equalities training is part of staff induction.

UHI Orkney staff take part in staff development, along with other OIC employees, in activities that support equality for students e.g ‘Getting it Right for every Child’

Equality Outcomes

As well as playing a role is achieving the OIC equality outcomes for example EO 1 and 4, Orkney College has developed its own 7 Equality Outcomes. Staff and students were involved in the developing of these outcomes and will play an active part in their delivery.

Equality Impact Assessment

As UHI Orkney is part of Orkney Islands Council, its uses the same equality impact assessment tool. Any policies or procedures only applicable to UHI Orkney will continue to be impact assessed by UHI Orkney staff.

Analysis of Student Information

Our College systems will be appropriately developed to ensure improved access to robust statistical evidence that can support analysis and decision making down to course level.

Reporting

UHI Orkney published it first Mainstreaming Report as part of Orkney Island’s Council Mainstreaming Report, in April 2015, and subsequently publishes at intervals of not more than two years from the publication of the first report.

UHI Orkney will publish not later than 30 April in the designated year and at four yearly interval will publish an updated set of Equality Outcomes.