EDI Report 2024-25

Northumbria Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) report across the academic year 2024-25.

Equality Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report 2024-2025 – Some Words From Andy Long, our Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive

I am delighted to present our EDI Annual Report 2024-2025.

As Vice-Chancellor I am proud to lead an institution where we promote fairness in a community where all students and staff feel they belong, and our commitment to EDI remains as strong as ever. We know that real change takes time, commitment and courage and that we must remain open to learning, listening and adapting as we go.

In the past academic year, we are pleased to have achieved both an institutional Athena Swan Silver Award and a Race Equality Charter Bronze Award. These awards recognise that we have made significant efforts to make our processes more inclusive. Our Athena Swan Silver Award replaced our Bronze Award, which we had held since 2015, and acknowledges our collective progress in areas such as recruitment, promotion, and workplace culture. However, we know that this is not the end of the journey and so our new Action Plan sets out clear targets across flexible working, career development, and closing the gender pay gap. In our Race Equality Action Plan, we set out measures to ensure that all colleagues and students feel that they belong, have equitable access to opportunities and are empowered to succeed. We must ensure that colleagues and students feel safe to tell us when experiences fall below expectation and that they are confident in our response.

With our new academic structure we have strengthened our commitment to EDI activity, making it central to all leadership roles. The Faculty Pro Vice-Chancellors have overall responsibility for the effective delivery of the EDI agenda and EDI is an important responsibility in all Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor roles.

We have begun work to amalgamate all Athena Swan Department Awards into Faculty Awards so that we have a clearer and more consistent approach to gender inclusion across the organisation. We have also established an Equality Actions Group to bring together the management of actions across all characteristics, to allow better intersectional working. Our Senior Sponsors will continue engagement with communities and groups through our equality Forums, which replace the Steering Groups.

We continue to make progress in our ambition to eliminate median pay gaps across gender, ethnicity and disability. Our gender pay gap has had the largest annual reduction since we began reporting. We continue to analyse the detail behind our pay gaps and consider best practice from across the sector, which has led to a set of key actions for the next year and beyond. We are pleased to have materially increased the disclosure rates, with a particular increase in disability disclosure, after targeted activity to encourage self-disclosure. This makes our reporting much more accurate and enables us to identify specific areas for improvement.

Together, we share a vision of a university where everyone feels valued, respected and that they truly belong. Some of the work that is undertaken across different areas of the University, impacting both staff and students is detailed in this report, which highlights how we are working to embed inclusion into all aspects of our practice and culture.