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Collecting data

There is a wide range of statistical data available to users within the University on topics including:

Students

• Undergraduate Admissions statistics
• Postgraduate Admissions statistics
• Current student data
• Examination results
• Destination data

Staff

• Personnel data

University and college data are separate, though with many overlaps, e.g. in relation to joint appointments, and student admissions and attainment. There is no central data collection to cover all aspects, although many improvements to student data reporting have been made in recent years. Workforce data on joint appointments is collected by the University.

Discussions are underway as to how to expand and improve future data collection. The University will seek voluntary disclosure of the protected characteristics on which it does not currently capture information: age, gender at birth, religion or belief and sexual orientation. Provision of such information would be subject to enhanced data protection procedures where appropriate.

Online job application forms provide a confidential opportunity for applicants to share personal information. The University’s equal opportunities monitoring template is being revised to capture data on most of the new protected characteristics. An enhanced rationale will be provided to explain the University’s purposes in collecting this data and to encourage applicants to share sensitive information. HESA has asked universities to seek additional data on students’ religion and belief, gender identity and sexual orientation, to be provided on a voluntary basis. The University is developing a new student information system (SITS) to be introduced in 2013. The EDU is working with Student Data Management and Analysis (SDMA) to establish templates for equality data collection and reporting, but will not be able to collect data on all protected characteristics until 2013/14.

Athena SWAN

The Athena SWAN Charter is awarded to universities (and individual academic departments) in the UK which have demonstrated a commitment to good employment practice for women working in science, engineering and technology (SET) in education and research. It aims to help universities identify and address barriers to the recruitment, retention and progression of women in science.

Athena SWAN website: http://www.athenaswan.org.uk/html/athena-swan/

The University has a Bronze institutional award while the Department of Zoology achieved a departmental Silver award in 2010. The Department of Earth Sciences was awarded Silver in April 2012 and a wide range of departments in MPLS and Medical Sciences are applying to the scheme in 2012. The Athena SWAN scheme is helping to drive improvements to data collection and reporting, and the MPLS and Medical Sciences divisions have invested additional resource in this area.

EHRC guidance

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published non-statutory guidance for public authorities on ‘Equality information and the equality duty’ which is available to download from their website.

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