Equality and diversity

Key activities:

• Monitor providers’ progress against their current access and participation plans and follow up with individual providers that may not be on track to deliver their commitments to improve equality of opportunity for students with relevant protected characteristics.
• Monitor the use of the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR) and seek to ensure it provides an appropriate and evidence-based reflection of risks to equality of opportunity for students with relevant protected characteristics.
• Continue to deliver programmes and identify effective practice to support local partnerships between providers and schools to improve access to higher education for groups with relevant protected characteristics.
• Use our conditions of registration for quality and standards and the Teaching Excellence Framework to seek to ensure a high quality academic experience with positive outcomes for students with relevant protected characteristics.
• Support the generation and sharing of robust evidence of effective practice to improve equality in access, success and progression for students with relevant protected characteristics.

Key activities:

• Explore how providers can act to prevent and respond to incidents of harassment and sexual misconduct in higher education through our work on a new approach to regulation, stakeholder engagement and by continuing to build our understanding of the issues.
• Assess and approve access and participation plans, including a focus on addressing the mental health needs of students, as identified by our Equality of Opportunity Risk Register.
• Support the higher education sector to address student mental health through the provision of funding, sharing effective practice, and publishing data and insights.

Key activities:

• Review our location strategy to ensure we can attract a diverse range of candidates, and appeal to a wider talent pool.
• Build on the success of our early-talent entry pathways and consider other programmes.  
• Review our HR policies to consider changes or additional guidance. Implement a cycle of robust, impartial policy review.
• Refresh our approach to equality, including by re-establishing the role and terms of reference for staff networks.
• Equip colleagues with the knowledge, skills and behaviours to be able to understand current societal debates and provide space for different views to be expressed in a way that is appropriate for a regulator.
• Introduce pulse surveys and develop our workforce insights to evaluate the employee experience more regularly. We will use these to continually improve our approach and ensure that feedback loops are closed.
• Review and redesign mandatory training to ensure that it is fit for purpose, legally accurate, and engaging.