BAME Update Report Sept 2016
Inspired Futures Programme
During last academic year, a series of extra-curricular BAME guest-speakers from the local community was originally planned. However to mitigate against the risk of low numbers of students attending, it was then decided to interview and record these speakers instead of them doing presentations to audiences. The focus of these interviews was to understand different people’s career journeys and to appreciate their commitment to persevering towards specified goals. In total 7 guest-speakers were interviewed, and the table below gives an outline of their roles and
Person being interviewed / Job title / Insight into the interview / Link to recordingCandy
Chetwynd / Labour councillor / Candy speaks about her experiences as a student and as a newly elected councillor /
JazvirMahil / PCSO- part of the local policing
team for Moorcroft / Jaz shares her
experiences as a PCSO /
Fahmida Rahman / Founder and manager of the Stepping Stones
Education and
Training
Academy / Fahmida’s interview covers teaching/training /
Sanjay Parmar / Service Centre
Manager at the
Odeon / Sanjay speaks about his career in management /
Julian
Waldron / Clinical
Biochemist/
Honorary Senior
Lecturer / Julian shares his experiences or
working with the NHS /
Carol Burt / Chief Executive
Officer of North
Staffs Users
Group and NonExecutive
Director for
Health-Watch
Birmingham / Carol shares her experiences as a nurse and social worker /
Tich
Nyamyaro / PCSO / Tich is a
Staffordshire University graduate and shares his story about joining the
Police Force /
It is intended that these recordings should be made available to students via the Students Union and the Careers Centre. In addition, it is suggested that selected parts of these recordings could become in-class learning resources for some subject areas.
BAME Advocates
The role of BAME advocates will continue. There is one in each Faculty and one in Information Services:
Portia Bentley / (ACT)Louis Martin / (BEL)
Sara Buckley / (CES)
Mani Das Gupta / (HS)
Beverley Maynard / (IS)
All these staff will continue to be the ‘go to’ person for BAME students in their areas, and will work closely with lecturers, personal tutors, student guidance advisors, study skills advisors.
This year the BAME Advocates will focus in particular on ......
BAME Steering Group
The BAME Steering was initially set up to monitor the HEA-funded Strategic Excellence Initiative project which we named as LEAP (Leading Excellence in Attainment and Positive Action). Although this project has now been completed, it has been decided that the Steering Group should continue as it provides an institutional focus for BAME-related issues. However to add further alignment to institutional metrics, the meetings have deliberately been scheduled to facilitate discussion and action relating to specific surveys, as follows:
Available data / BAME Steering Group meeting where this data is discussedDLHE(May/June) & SVS / 5th Sept 2016 (11.30-1.00)
NSS (Aug) / 4th October 2016 (11.30-1.00)
Market segmentation / 30th November 2016 (11.30-1.00)
Appeals/complaints (Oct) / 30th November 2016 (11.30-1.00)
Attainment/Good Degrees / 30th November 2016 (11.30-1.00)
Retention/withdrawal / 30th November 2016 and/or 15th February 2017 (11.30-1.00)
Work experience (April) / 3rd May 2017 (11.30-1.00)
SVS results (April) / 3rd May 2017 (11.30-1.00)
The agendas for these meetings will also be further informed by the following data when it becomes available:
Attendance monitoring
Peer mentoring
Students accessing study skills data
Membership of the BAME Steering Group is as follows:
Ian Blachford
Rosy Crehan
Astrid Herrhoffer
Mike Hamlyn
Georgina Kelly
Noel Morrison
Alison Pope
Marj Spiller
Steve Wyn Williams
Student Union representative
BAME Advocate representative
Qualitative research project
During last academic year, the BAME Advocates had some ‘learning conversations’ with a number of BAME students, and one of the recommendations following this was that some institutional qualitative research should be undertaken. This has now been commissioned by the ADU working in partnership with the School of Education. The aim of this study is to provide an insight into the student experience of BAME students in order to identify some of the factors which may be implicated in the attainment gap between them and White students. The research questions are as follows:
•What are BAME students’ expectations of the university experience and to what extent do they feel these have been met?
•What is their overall approach to their programme of study?
•To what extent do they access study support?
•What are the barriers to accessing study support?
It is intended that this will take the form of a pilot study, focussing on 2 particular curriculum areas (Accountancy and Law) which traditionally have a large number of BAME students. This research has already started, and it is anticipated that the end of project report will be available in March 2017.
Unconscious Bias
During last academic year, 5 staff development workshops on Unconscious Bias were organised for staff involved in the recruitment and/or teaching of students. These workshops were organised by Challenge Consultancy, an external company specialising in equality and diversity. According to the data recorded in MyView, 252 members of staff have attended the additional Unconscious Bias training within the University (i.e. the workshops in April and May). Of these, 144 are academic staff as follows:
FacultyACT / 59 (44%)
BEL / 30 (29%)
CES / 14 (12%)
HS / 41 (24%)
For this academic year, it has been decided that an additional staff development session organised by
Challenge Consultancy will be offered to staff. A more targeted approach will be used and so Associate Deans (Learning and Teaching) have been asked to identify courses where there is a significant attainment gap. Once this information is available, the ADU will organise a suitable date and time for this staff development workshop to take place.
Dr. Marj Spiller, ADU
Sept 2016