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Lynne Smith is introducing the themes of the day and thanking everyone who has helped put the conference together

Liz Cumberbatch says E&D impact assessments can be interesting and useful, not just a box-ticking exercise

Impact assessment only legally required for race, disability and gender - but Christine says it makes sense to include age, sexual orientation, belief and religion while we're doing/getting an assessment

Impact assessments are not just about eliminating discrimination, but about all aspects of what we do; making reasonable adjustments for everybody.

This exercise was to give us a flavour of everything, not just big documents but drilling down into everything we need to look at.

Next thing is to prioritise. On the list they have generated, they can only start a third as high priority:

- is it major?
- or, is it minor but has an important impact on a group?
- or, is it a particular cause of concern

People are giving one or two things from their lists:
- selection & performance management
- flexible working
- managing absence
- learners: services to learners & outreach
- job descriptions & induction
- learner health and safety
- enrolment for learners & the tutor handbook
- accomodation surveys
- observation of teaching and learning
- marketing, where material goes to and language

Race, disbility and gender - when these policies first came out there was guidance on impact assessment. Advice was that some aspects were race-neutral and that they could screen out these issues - but it soon became clear these would have an impact on other duties (eg carparking would have an impact on disabled people). The reality is, much of what you do will have some impact - you need to prioritise.

Organisations need to gather evidence to inform their impact assessment process.

Marketing - how do you advertise your course? - brochures. If we were doing the impact assessment on course brochures, what evidence would be useful to gather to inform the process?

1. We need to be careful we don't screen out procedures that will have an impact on other areas
2. We need to be careful that we don't leap in
For those organisations that are well down the road, they should improve their evidence. They were so enthusiastic they tended to jump in too quickly rather than consider the evidence.
3. Action - we now need to record outcomes on a template

Pros of using template: aide-memoire; allows benchmarking; allows aggregation of data across region/country; saves re-inventing wheel, and makes it easy to show funders , inspectors etc. that we are doing the assessments

Advantages from the floor: template is an aide memoire and an opportunity to benchmark | it allows us to aggregate and compare outcomes across different areas | it's a good starting point, better than a blank sheet of paper | consistency across the organisation | measurable | allows us to evidence what we're doing to key stakeholders eg equality & human rights commission or other organisations & OFSTED

Disadvantages
Whole exercise gets bad PR because it's yet another form - training is important | could encourage a tickbox approach | right people need to put the form together - can become too bureaucratic | can be restrictive for local use, got to be flexible enough to work across the board | people need to see the benefits

All the materials and presentations from the conference pack will be on train.wea.org.uk around next week

If you want to add reflections and suggestions you can join train.wea.org.uk - there is a there button to register

Why should we do it?
- there are legal consequences if we don't. 60 colleges got a letter from the commission for race equality and they were asked to send their last five equality impact assessment. They were told if they didn't provide then they would be taken to the legal enforcement team. They got a 97 %response rate and it was a wake-up call.
- more importantly, asessments are a fantastic way to improve equality and diversity in what we do. Very often improving the aaaexperiences of specific groups of people actually improves the experience of everyone. This isn't just about our journey to equality, it's about our journey to outstanding.