Equal Opportunities
The Learning Partnership's equal opportunities policy is produced in respect of these groups:
- The Learning Partnership Board and its advisory committees.
- Employees.
- Sub-contractors.
- Learners and potential learners.
Equal opportunities is promoted and assured by the Learning Partnership through:
- Our quality assurance system.
- Staff recruitment, training and development.
- Monitoring and audit procedures.
Quality assurance include self-assessment and development planning procedures and inspection visits. Equality issues are identified through the self-assessment and development planning process. The quality assurance system requires all sub-contractors operate and monitor an equal opportunities policy as a condition of contract.
Staff Recruitment, Training and Development
As an employer the Learning Partnership ensures that all full-time and part-time appointments, or contract staff engagements on a temporary basis, are made under procedures that are fair, transparent, consistent and free of any racial, sexual or religious bias.
The Learning Partnership staff and sub-contractors staff are encouraged to participate in training and development events that will help them promote equality of opportunity. The staff development programme is continuously under development and includes equality topics such as promoting social inclusion, monitoring demographic data, supporting people with low basic skills and competency in English, widening access to learning, and meeting the requirements of legislation on disability.
Staff from sub-contractors come from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and across the partnership there is spoken and written competence in an extensive list of African, Asian and European languages.
Compliance with Legislation
The Learning Partnership seeks to comply with all relevant equality legislation and in particular:
- The Race Relations and Race Relations Amendment Acts.
- Sex Discrimination Act.
- Disability Discrimination Act.
Monitoring and Audit Procedures
The Learning Partnership will continue to compile a consistent monitoring and audit procedure in order to be able to analyse trends and identify particular target groups who may be missing out on opportunities to return to learning.
All sub-contractors engaged on projects compile data or report on learners' gender, ethnicity, age, employment status and any disabilities. The monitoring data allows the Learning Partnership to benchmark against other local, regional and national data sets.
