Public Sector Equality Duty: Annual Report 2023

Reporting on the academic year 2022-2023

Introduction: Duties under the Equality Act (2010)

Public bodies, of which the College is one, have both general and specific equality duties. The general duties are to have due regard in decision-making to:

  1. Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010.
  2.  Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not, by
    • Removing or minimising disadvantages suffered by people due to their protected characteristics;
    • Taking steps to meet the needs of people from protected groups where these are different from the needs of other people; and
    • Encouraging people from protected groups to participate in public life or in other activities where their participation is disproportionately low
  3. Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not, by
    • Tackling prejudice, and
    • Promoting understanding between people from different groups.

The specific duties are:

  1. To publish relevant, proportionate information (including quantitative data) showing compliance with the Equality Duty by 31 March each year, and subsequently at intervals no greater than one year from the last publication. This includes information relating to persons who share a relevant protected characteristic who are:
    • Its employees (if it has more than 150) , and
    • Other persons affected by its policies and practices (e.g. students)
  2. To prepare and publish at least one specific and measurable objective that the College thinks it should achieve to meet any of the three aims of the equality duty by 31st March each year. Objectives must be published at least every four years.
  3. The protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, and sex and sexual orientation. Marriage and civil partnership are also protected in respect of the first general duty, in employment only.

This report is designed to meet first of the specific duties. It has been prepared for Green Templeton’s HR and Academic Committees and will be presented for approval by Governing Body.

The information included relates to the College community’s staff and students. The report covers the academic year 2022-23 (1 October 2022 – 30 September 2023); where data are presented, they refer to academic year unless otherwise stated. The College collects data and information on some of the protected characteristics and also relies upon the University to provide data on students. Not all protected characteristics are addressed for all measures by these data. In some cases the numbers are too small to be meaningful.

This report should be read alongside the college’s Equality and Diversity Policy, which is available.

This policy was re-written substantively in 2020-2021 and approved by Governing Body in November 2021.

Governance

The college’s Equality Policy states that the Human Resources (HR) and Academic Committees will have responsibility for co-ordination of policy development and the identification of priorities, and will report to Governing Body on an annual basis. The Senior Tutor presents student-related data and the Human Resources Manager presents staff data.

In 2019, an Equality & Diversity Forum was established. The remit of this forum is outlined in the appendix to this document. It met 5 times during 2021-22.

In 2019 the college appointed an E&D Champion, Dr Neo Tapela. Dr Tapela is an Associate Fellow of the college. She co-chaired the E&D Forum (2019-2021) with the Senior Tutor, who is the E&D lead.

In 2021 Dr Tapela departed this role to take up a new position outside of Oxford.

In 2021 college appointed a member of Governing Body to be an E&D Champion, with membership of the E&D Forum. This is Professor Susan James Relly. Professor Relly co-chaired the E&D Forum with the Senior Tutor in 2021-22. Susan Relly left Oxford at Christmas 2022.

In 2023 the college appointed a new member of Governing Body to be the E&D Champion. This is Professor Sonia Antoraz Contera.

The PSED report is reported to GB in Michaelmas annually.

As the College has fewer than 150 members of staff it is not required to publish staff data as part of this report however relevant staff data against our specific equalities objectives is reported alongside student- and fellow-related data.

Equality Report 2022-2023

Green Templeton’s Equality Objectives

The college’s priorities are to:

  1. Increase the proportion of women and black and minority ethnic (BME) members among its fellowship, and, in particular, on its Governing Body;
  2. Improve the recruitment and retention of BME staff and their representation among senior roles;
  3. Improve accessibility for disabled students and other members of the community;
  4. Embed equality and diversity in all activities, in particular taking a more proactive approach to encouraging people from protected groups to participate in college activities and to ensure they feel supported to do so.

The Equality & Diversity Forum were of the view in May 2021 that these priorities should remain in place for the next reporting period, 2021-2022. However the Forum would like to see timescales included, particularly for objective 1. The E&D Forum agreed to continue to support these priorities in 2022-23.

Report on Progress with Equalities Objectives in 2022-23

Objective 1: Increase the proportion of women and black and minority ethnic (BME) members among its fellowship, and, in particular, on its Governing Body;

Objective 2: Improve the recruitment and retention of BME staff and their representation among senior roles;

Representation of women in senior staff and fellowship roles

Staff: the representation of women in senior roles remains strong. Data collected on staff in April 2023 identify that across all roles, the gender split is almost 50/50, but 64% of women held senior roles (Grade 6 or above).

With the appointment of a new Principal in September 2020, now one of three members of the College’s executive management team is a woman (Principal, Bursar, Senior Tutor). The Vice Principal is a woman. In 2022-23, the college created an Executive Management Group (EMG) to oversee college business and its developing strategy, as an extension of the Executive Management Team (EMT). The EMG includes the Principal, Bursar and Senior Tutor – all of whom are GB Fellows and trustees of the college – along with the Domestic Bursar, College Accountant, Director of Development and Alumni Relations and Director of Communications. 3/7 members of the EMG are women.

Fellows: the appointment of fellows is overseen by the Fellowship Committee, reporting to Governing Body.

College fellows are elected from among the university’s academic community. The College supports the university’s objective to increase the representation of women in senior roles. To exercise some influence over recruitment, the Principal or Senior College Officer sits on all panels for new appointments to the university which have an association with the College. Data on the proportion of women elected to the fellowship and, particularly, to the Governing Body are monitored by Governing Body.

In 2018-19, 13/43 (30%) members of Governing Body were women. In 2019-20, 11/38 members were women (29%). In 2021-22, 11/35 members were women (31%). In 2022-23, 10/31 members are women (32%).

During 2020-21, with the arrival of the new Principal, Governing Body agreed to a review of college fellowship categories and processes, including a detailed review of the membership and process for being elected to GB. A key driver for this review is to support equality objective 1.

The college’s review of GB membership concluded in 2022-23. This review resulted in a change to the membership of GB, such that Senior Research Fellows and all Research Fellows with an associated post who have achieved Recognition of Distinction from the University (i.e. promoted to Professor) became eligible to join GB. All eligible fellows were then asked to express their interest in becoming a member of GB. As the proportion of women in academia increases among more junior staff, we should expect the proportion of women eligible to join GB to increase over the coming years so long as women are also available to serve as GB fellows and take on the responsibilities that come with being a trustee of the college.

The college ran its first Research Fellows competition since 2018 again in 2022-23. This competition invited junior members of the University’s academic staff to apply for a fellowship at GTC. 14 new fellows were appointed; 7 of these (50%) are women.

The college appoints only a very small number of academic staff responsible for providing clinical teaching, all on a part-time/stipendiary basis (a Senior Doll Fellow, who is a member of Governing Body, plus 5 Doll Fellows). In 2020-21, 2/6 Doll Fellows were women. The Senior Doll Fellow retired from his role at the end of August 2022. He was replaced by two current Doll Fellows who job-share the SDF role. Both of the college’s Senior Doll Fellows now are women.

The university published its first Equality Report in some years in April 2023, reporting on the academic year 2021-22. This document identifies that women comprise 20% of staff in Oxford’s most senior academic grade, Statutory Professor. This document also identifies that its targets for representation of women on senior University committees is 40-60%, which it hopes to achieve by 2029, but has so far fallen short of.

University of Oxford Equality Report

A proposed target of 50% for women across all categories of fellowship in college was discussed at the E&D Forum in May 2022 and it was agreed that this should be the aim for Green Templeton.

Representation of BME fellows in the community and on Governing Body

Currently, Green Templeton does not hold data on fellows’ ethnicity. As a matter of routine, new and renewing fellows are asked to complete a full EDI form on appointment so we are very slowly building data through this route. Among new fellows appointed, or existing fellows renewed, in 2022-23 (n=23), 5 are BME (21%). This group includes 5 Associate Fellows.

In Spring 2023, the college held a joint meeting of the Academic and Fellowship Committees to review all college fellowship data in order to make some strategic recommendations about the future of the fellowship. As a result of this meeting it was agreed that we will continue to collect full EDI data when new fellows are appointed or existing fellows re-appointed. Additionally, we would collect full EDI data from GB fellows as a matter of priority before targeting other categories of fellowship.

As all of our fellows apart from Associate Fellows are appointed because they hold academic positions within the university, setting a target for BME fellows at Green Templeton is dependent on the university’s targets. As of last year, the University had no published targets for the appointment of BME academics. However, in its Equality Report, referred to previously in this paper and published in April 2023, it has now confirmed the following targets:

  • To achieve a yearly increase in the proportion of BME Statutory Professors, with 9% representation by 2029. Baseline for this group is 6%.
  • To achieve a yearly increase in the proportion of BME Associate Professors, with 11% representation by 2029. Baseline for this group is 9%
  • To achieve a yearly increase in the proportion of BME Senior Researchers (Grades 8 and above), with 20% representation by 2029. Baseline for this group is 17%.

As was reported in last year’s Green Templeton PSED, according to HESA data (2019 latest available) just 11% of UK academics at professorial level are BME; 18% at all levels of academic achievement.
The college has not yet set its own targets for BME fellows. To do so it should first collect baseline data on our fellowship and then consider how we can work with the University’s targets.

At the joint meeting of Academic and Fellowship Committees in Spring 2023, it was agreed that, in the meantime, Green Templeton should use the recruitment of Associate Fellows to actively increase our diversity as this category of fellows are not typically University employees.

The recruitment and retention of BME staff and their representation among senior roles

Staff data were collected in April 2023. 18% of GTC staff identify as BME (cf. 9% in 2022), which compared to 22% of the population of Oxford as a whole. This is an increase on 2022, when only 9% of staff identified as BME. The E&D Forum noted that the population of Oxford should not be a limiting benchmark given the significant population of BME students in college. However, whilst Oxford is diverse, Oxfordshire is not, and so geography may continue to be something of a limiting factor in the future as long as staff are required to commute to work in the college. No members of the college’s Senior Management or Executive Management teams are people of colour.

The following statement is being used for all recruitment to encourage applications from LGBT+ and BME groups:

“Green Templeton College welcomes applications from people from all sections of the community and are particularly encouraging those from diverse groups, such as LGBTQ+ and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates, who are currently under-represented in the college staff team.”

10% of staff employed identify as LGBT+ .

In April 2022, it was agreed by HR Committee that all college staff would be asked to complete five online EDI courses, within two years, available from the University. Completion of EDI courses would be routinely checked in the annual PDR.

Staff with a welfare-related role undertake training in student mental health. Training provided by the University’s Counselling Service (“Supporting Students in Distress”) was completed by this group of GTC staff (including Junior Deans) in February 2023.

Objective 3: Improve accessibility for disabled students and members of the College community.

This is a key consideration as the college embarks upon a new estates project (‘New Build’, formerly ‘Tennis Court Project’), led by the Bursar and Domestic Bursar and overseen by the Buildings Committee, which includes the development of new student accommodation, a café and dining hall. This project is currently waiting for the results of its planning application.

Students

Disabled students are supported in College by the College’s disability lead (Senior Tutor) and Disability Co-ordinator (Academic Registrar). The Academic Registrar regularly provides alternative examination arrangements in College for students with specific requirements. Disabled students’ support is overseen by the College’s Welfare Committee.

It was reported last year that definitions of and attitudes towards disability vary across the world and some students may not feel that disclosure is appropriate or indeed safe for them. To support students in deciding whether or not to disclose, we dedicated a slide to this issue in our 2022 induction materials and will continue to include this in our inductions in 2023.

The Student Welfare Committee this year organised talks and Q&A with experts in particular fields relevant to the welfare of graduate students. Topics included disabled students’ support and support and advice for students accused of sexual misconduct (both delivered by staff from the University’s professional welfare services).

Staff

In April 2023, 29% of staff disclosed a disability. The majority of these are mental health related, such as depression or anxiety, but 18% of those with a disability have a chronic long-term condition. Staff are supported by line managers, by the HR Manager and by referrals to Occupational Health, as required. The college has an EAP (Employment Assistance Programme) which is available to staff to use 24/7. The college also appoints staff representatives each year, who are available to listen to staff concerns or worries and signpost to the best support for the issue.

Estate

The college has installed a children’s play area for students with children under the age of 6 to play safely in college while accompanied by parents. This area is a quiet and relaxed space for children who may have a disability or issues with busy or noisy play areas.

The college underwent a disability audit during the early part of 2022 and a full report was issued. The report has been published in the University Access Guide and is now in a standardised format for easy reading.

As a result of this audit the college has created an Accessibility Audit Action list (see Appendix 2) and a number of key pieces of work have been undertaken to improve access to the college grounds and buildings, and to student accommodation at Rewley Abbey Court.

Digital Communications

The college continues to bring its website content in line with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (2.1) Level AA (WCAG) and is working with developers XIST2 to address the non-compliant elements of our website (detailed on a webpage of Accessibility known issues). During November 2022 a large archive of content from nine Emerging Markets Symposia was migrated onto the main website in a newly accessible format.

We will continue to work to address several accessibility issues identified as ‘low priority’ by a specialist-company we commissioned, AbilityNet, during a January 2021 audit. We have addressed those ‘high priority’ and ‘medium priority’. All new content published aims to meet the accessibility criteria and guidance on best practices for digital accessibility is shared internally. Images in our email communications and social media posts are now consistently tagged with alternative text

Objective 4: Embedding equality and diversity in all activities, in particular taking a more proactive approach to ensuring that people from protected groups feel supported and are encouraged to participate in college life.

2022-23: Activities Promoting EDI

The college, in collaboration with the GCR, has hosted a number of inclusive events and undertaken a range of inclusive activities this academic year. These include:

The third GTC Diversity Dinner in celebration of Black History month, held in October 2023. The Diversity Dinner is overseen by the E&D Forum, which has agreed it will rotate annually to mark LGBTQ+ History Month, Black History Month or International Women’s Day.

Led by the GCR’s Black Students’ Reps, the college marked Black History Month 2022 with a series of activities curated around the theme Preserving our Own – celebrating Black excellence in the field of health and beauty. It was marked with a range of events during the month, including an Academic Talk, College Diversity Dinner, BHM Movie Night and Pub Quiz.

Students were also encouraged to explore the Maarifa collection in the library, which celebrates Black history, culture, writers and experiences. This was created in June 2021.

The GCR LGBTQ+ reps hosted regular bar nights throughout the year.

The Library team again promoted its book collections to celebrate LGBTQ+ (February 2023) and Disability History Months (November 2022).

We support religion and belief through the provision of a prayer room

In support of International Women’s Day, the E&D Forum launched an initiative designed to diversify the college’s portraiture. This project has funding from the College’s Annual Fund. The diversifying portraiture project aims to showcase and celebrate the college’s diverse cohort of alumna, fellows, students and staff in ways that complement the theme for International Women’s Day 2023 of ‘Embrace Equity’. The finished portraits are to hang in an exhibition for International Women’s Day 2024, after which they will have permanent homes across the college.

In conjunction with the college’s E&D Forum, the Communications Team have been working on establishing an annual calendar that promotes and celebrates particular E&D activities/festivals/notable dates. Through 2022-23, in addition to the above activities we celebrated the following via social media and relevant college bulletins:

  • Pride month
  • Ramadan
  • International Women’s Day
  • LGBTQ+ History month (x2)
  • Lunar new year
  • Black History Month (x2)
  • Disability history month
  • Hanukkah
  • Diwali

Additionally, the college catering team, in consort with the GCR, organised the following celebrations:

  • Welfare Snacks and Chats (informal drop in sessions with the GCR for all students throughout Michaelmas and Hilary)
  • Bar night featuring poems and music from Black artists
  • LGBTQ Pride and pizza nights in the bar
  • Decolonised Thanksgiving dinner
    • Shared Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving address on the tables along with information regarding the history of thanksgiving
    • Featured traditional dishes on the menu
    • Supported by the EDI forum
  • Burns Night formal dinner followed by traditional Ceilidh dancing at maths
  • Black Students’ society get together followed by student supper
  • Oxmas dinner within term time as the Christmas dinners fall outside of term
  • Christmas formal dinners x 5
  • Christmas Bop with themed cocktails
  • Staff Christmas gift appeal for local children and families
  • Lunar new year formal dinner
  • Mexican Day of the Dead theme supper
  • LGBTQ+ history month rainbow cupcakes
  • Take away meals for students observing Ramadan to reheat after sundown
  • Pancakes for Shrove Tuesday lunch

The college’s initiative to support student-led academic projects, run as part of the Annual Fund competition, specifically welcomes applications on subjects that address issues related to equality and diversity. It has supported a number of the activities listed above, along with others related to E&D, including a series of events to support student parents.

Partners and Families (2022-2023)

The college runs an Associate Member Scheme for partners and families of students. This scheme provides funds to support a number of parent and families events each year, run in collaboration with the GCR family rep. In 2022-23, the scheme supported 63 active members.
It ran the following events:

  • Welcome meet and greet for student parents and their families
  • Welcome drinks in the Stables Bar for partners
  • Halloween Themed Trick-or-Treat Trail
  • Easter Egg Hunt
  • All About Anna’s Animals – Summer themed families’ event
  • Pub Quiz for Associate members
  • Completion of the GTC children’s playground started last year
  • Purchase of playground toys (tricycle, sandbox toys)
  • Toys for the GTC playgroup drop in which took place most Saturday mornings during term time.
  • Installation of a children’s garden near the playground where the children planted sunflowers
  • Roadside Spring clean-up
  • Family friendly walking tour of Oxford

The college raised the progressive pride flag to mark LGBTQ+ History Month and Pride. It also raised its own ‘Different Equal’ Flag to mark Black History Month.

This year, the E&D Forum agreed to support the following principles associated with facilitating student ‘belonging’ with the idea that these should be factored into our induction and welcome processes in particular:

If belonging can be defined as the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included and supported by others then elements include:

  • Supporting students to form connections with other students, staff, other members of college
  • Assisting students to identify with the college: sense we are living shared values
  • Ensuring stability: reliable support services and facilities. Clarity on what is available
  • Enabling active student voice mechanisms: regular opportunities for students to be heard and to feel that views are taken into account/responded to

Student Feedback

The college has two main mechanisms to capture student feedback in a regular and timely manner. A twice-termly Staff-Student Liaison Forum is co-chaired by the Senior Tutor and GCR President, and attended by members of the GCR and senior college staff.

The Annual Student Feedback Survey runs in Trinity Term and is reported to Academic Committee.

Equality and Diversity questions from Annual Student Feedback Survey 2023

Students are invited to respond annually to the following question: “Green Templeton aims to live by its values of inclusivity, equality and diversity. What would you like to see us do in order to achieve this?”

33 respondents provided comments. A number of these praise the college’s efforts so far; several respondents note that they chose the college for its progressive, non-hierarchical and ‘modern’ attitude. Other issues raised include:

  • More diversity in senior positions and among the fellowship
  • Greater consideration or students with socio-economic disadvantage and/or facing hardship, in particular to support access to the college’s formal dinners
  • Support for mature students and those with families

Equality & Diversity Data from Student Feedback Survey 2023

The E&D Forum recommended that equalities data be collected as part of our annual student experience survey (shared in Trinity Term) so we can monitor how far this feedback exercise reflects the college student community.

This section is optional.

Data from TT23:

Gender: 75 respondents. 49 women (65%), 24 men (32%), 2 prefer not to say. Cf. 66% women in 2022. 97% of 75 respondents said their gender is the same as that assigned at birth.

Ethnicity: 75 respondents. 36/75 White (48%); 26/75 (35%) black or minority ethnic. Cf. 60% white and 35% BME in 2022. In response to comments in previous surveys, this year the category Latinx was included for the first time.

Disability: 75 respondents. 14/75 identify as disabled (18%). 13% in 2022.

Sexuality: 73 respondents. 54 (74%) heterosexual. 15 respondents identify as LGBTQ+ (20%) cf. 11% in 2022

Caring responsibilities. 11 of 75 respondents reported that they have caring responsibilities (14%). Cf. 14% in 2022

According to E&D data provided by the university, of GTC students in December 2022: 59.8% are women, 48.2% are black or minority ethnic and 14.9% are disabled. Data are not available for sexuality or caring responsibilities. Women are slightly over-represented in the student survey (as they were in 2022), and BME students underrepresented. However, though the proportion of our BME respondents to the survey has increased.

Report on equality practices not covered by the objectives

Student data reporting: gender, race and disability

As the college is not the admitting body for students it has limited influence over its population. All equalities data are collated and reported by the University.

Gender: the balance at GTC remains in favour of a female majority (59.8%). There have been some small fluctuations in this over the last few years. A gender balance towards a female majority is in line with the representation of women on postgraduate programmes in UK universities (according to HESA).

  • 2022-23: 59.8% GTC students are women cf. 50.9% OU (all students)
  • 2021-22: 59.7% GTC students are women cf. 50.2% OU (all students)

Students of colour: the university uses the term BME to collate these data.

The proportion of Green Templeton graduate students reporting as BME (48.2%) has risen since 2016 and continues to be higher than the University average.

2022-23: 48.2% BME students at GTC cf. 36.5% OU (all students)

2021-22: 46.7% BME students at GTC cf. 34.2% OU (all students)

Disabled students: the proportion of our students who disclose a disability is broadly in line with the wider graduation student population, though is lower than institutions with large UG populations. This is understood to be because of the greater number of international students among the graduate population.

Student disability data

2022-23: 14.9% GTC cf. 17.9% OU (all students)

2021-22: 13.7% GTC cf. 16.8% OU (all students)

Author: Dr Alison Stenton, Green Templeton Equality Lead
23 August 2023

To be reported to HR Committee and Academic Committee: MT23
To be approved Governing Body: MT23