Our Equality and Diversity Vision
Manchester Metropolitan University is proud of its diverse community of staff, students and visitors. We are committed to creating a positive environment where everybody is treated with dignity and respect.
The University aims to build a culture where:
- Fairness and inclusion are a fundamental part of everything that we do.
- Diversity is valued and celebrated.
- Good relations between diverse members of the University’s community are promoted.
- People’s diverse abilities and backgrounds are recognised and are treated with respect.
- Students from diverse backgrounds have an equal opportunity to benefit from higher education.
- Students and staff from diverse backgrounds have an equal opportunity to reach their potential.
- Benefits are maximised to the local communities that we serve.
The vision for equality and diversity supports values set out in the University’s Corporate Strategy 2012 – 2017, in particular;
- to promote diversity.
- to respect the rights of individuals.
- to promote responsible, ethical and professional behaviour.
MMU will seek to achieve this vision through the Single Equality Scheme (SES) and action plans and the key principles set out in our Equality and Diversity Policy.
How does MMU meet the Equality Act 2010?
2010/11 saw a lot of change in the equality and diversity landscape with the introduction of the Equality Act 2010. The public sector equality duty was introduced on 5th April 2011.
The equality duty is a duty on public bodies, including HEI’s and others carrying out public functions. It is designed to help HEI’s fulfil the requirements of the Equality Act by taking proactive steps to:
- combat discrimination, victimisation and harassment – see
- advance and promote equality of opportunity between different groups – see MMU’s
- foster good relations between people from different groups – see MMU’s
It aims to do this by ensuring that equality considerations are embedded into day to day work. Specific duties have recently been published which require higher education institutions to be transparent in their approach to meeting the general duty. There are three specific duties:
- To publish information to demonstrate compliance with the equality duty by 31st January 2012 – see our 2010/11 E&D Annual Report.
To set and publish one or more specific and measurable equality objective, at least every four years (by April 2012)
MMU has set 2 strategic Equality Objectives for the period of April 2012 to April 2016;
- Staff Equality Objective
To increase the number of females progressing overall at MMU, and specifically, to professor and senior manager level.
This objective will be monitored across all roles in MMU using data from the E-HR (SAP) system. Once a baseline data set has been produced it will be benchmarked against the average progression per role across the HEI sector using the HESA monitoring report for 2010/11 and reported on as part of the Annual Equality and Diversity Annual Report 2012.
- Student Equality Objectives
To ensure equality of student experience by identifying any areas where satisfaction levels for students from protected characteristics fall below average and devising appropriate action plans.
This will be monitored through the internal student satisfaction survey, which will be analysed to identify any statistically significant variations for protected characteristics. Output from this analysis will be included within the Annual Equality and Diversity Report 2012 and the approach to monitoring will be embedded within a new business intelligence and reporting infrastructure that will replace Uniview.
- To publish information and equality objectives in a manner that is accessible to the public – see our Single Equality Scheme (SES) and action plans.
