Advance HE’s Equality Charters are member-led frameworks, shaped by and accountable to the member institutions which commit to the shared principles of equality, diversity and inclusion.
Throughout the process of updating the Race Equality Charter framework over the past 18 months, we have centred members’ input and feedback, including through engagement events and the invaluable contributions and oversight of the Race Equality Charter Governance Committee.
We have shared working drafts of the updated application materials with REC members which we created from this input – REC members can find the engagement pack in the Resources section of the REC connect group.
We are keen that the sector has further opportunities to contribute before these materials are finalised, and welcome REC members to engage with us over the coming months.
Engagement Event
Advance HE is hosting an event at 10:00-12:00 BST on 31 May 2023 to discuss the draft application materials with our REC members and gather their feedback. The feedback captured at this event will be used to finalise the application materials which will be shared in Summer 2023.
The engagement event is now open for registration and can be accessed by following the link below.
Engagement Survey
Any REC member unable to attend the engagement event on 31 May 2023 can use the short Engagement Survey as an alternative way of sharing your feedback with Advance HE.
This survey is intended as an alternative to the engagement event, so if you can attend the event there is no need to complete the survey.
Please complete the survey by 23:59 BST on 6 June 2023.
Additionally, we are inviting institutional responses (rather than individual responses) so we welcome you to prepare your responses with colleagues – for example, your REC self-assessment team – and submit a single institutional response.
Equality Charters and Freedom of Speech consultation
Alongside the engagement with the sector to shape the updated Charter, in the coming weeks, we will be finalising additional guidance and support for REC members, including how Equality Charters support your institution’s duties relating to freedom of speech and academic freedom. Advance HE is seeking expressions of interest to input into a consultation to understand how freedom of speech and academic freedom can be more explicitly embedded in the Athena Swan and Race Equality Charters.
Pilot the updated REC culture survey
We want to ensure the updated survey is as effective and supportive of universities’ race equality work as possible, and we intend to undertake a pilot with a number of early adopters who wish to run the survey in their institutions in the 2023/24 academic year. The outcomes of the pilot will be reviewed with the Race Equality Charter Governance Committee in the autumn of 2024.
We are asking any applicant planning on using the updated survey questions during 2023/24 to register your interest in taking part in the pilot exercise so that we can learn from your experience and feedback.
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