Equality and diversity of the HEFCE Board and Committees

We are committed to promoting equality and diversity in all aspects of our work. This includes the appointment of members to our Board and committees.

Appointing members

Appointments to the HEFCE Board are made by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and draw on applicants from across higher education, business and the public sector. The recruitment process operates in accordance with guidelines set out by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. These state that Government Departments must seek to encourage applicants from different backgrounds, and remove obstacles which may deter them from applying for public appointments.

We apply the same principles in recruiting to our committees, and our aim is to reach as many potential applicants from the higher education community, business and charitable sectors. We advertise details of any vacancy through:

the national press
our web-site and relevant mailing lists
our Involving Disabled People Group
any relevant subject and interest groups.

Data collection

Equal opportunities monitoring forms were sent to members of HEFCE’s Board and Audit Committee, its Strategic Advisory Committees, and the Joint Advisory Committee for Church Universities and Colleges at the end of 2011.

Although return of the forms was on a voluntary basis, we were very pleased with the completion and disclosure rate of 86 per cent. We believe this demonstrates a level of commitment from Board and committee members to equality and diversity issues.

We have used statistics on senior management postholders in higher education (published by HESA) as a benchmark. While HEFCE compares favourably in the ethnicity, gender and disability categories, we also recognise that our equality and diversity data and these benchmarks are not yet fully reflective of the higher education community or the population as a whole. We have found no other published data from comparable organisations against which to benchmark.

Future commitments

This exercise enabled us to formally look at the data across a range of categories and we will use this to inform our work, particularly in the action we can take to encourage more diversity across our Board and Committees. This remains a challenge, but we are committed to seeking opportunities to promote equality and diversity whenever we can. We will continue to provide advice and support to BIS about our equality and diversity needs whenever BIS is undertaking a recruitment exercise. Indeed, recent advertisements for Board and Audit Committee members specifically welcomed applications from under-represented groups including women, people with disabilities, and ethnically diverse people.

We will continue to address equality and diversity issues whenever there is a need to advertise for committee members, and look at ways in which we can reach as wide an audience as possible, taking advice from relevant groups where possible.

In order to assess our success in these areas, we plan to repeat the survey in 2014.

		Results (%)	HESA data: Senior management postholders in 2010-11 * (%)**	Data for HEFCE staff (%)
Total number of Board/Committee members	111 *
Number of forms returned	96	86
Ethnicity
BME	5	5	4	5
White	89	93	96	88
Prefer not to say/not answered	2	2		7
Gender
Male	59	61	66	32
Female	35	36	34	62
Prefer not to say/not answered	2	2		6
Age
25-34	2	2
35-44	4	4
45-54	15	16
55+	71	75
Prefer not to say/not answered	3	3
Religion or belief
No religion	38	39
Christian	45	47
Other religion	5	5
Prefer not to say/not answered	8	8
Sexual orientation
Gay man/woman	7	7
Heterosexual/straight	83	86
Prefer not to say/not answered	6	6
Disability
Yes	N/A**		3	5
No	N/A		97	86
Prefer not to say/not answered	N/A			9