This guidance, funded by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), was developed by Advance HE in collaboration with Scottish college and university partners.
Map of Equality Impact Assessment content
Strategic Equality Impact Assessment
Equality Impact Assessment in Scotland
Practical guidance for Scottish colleges and universities
How to use the guidance
Key information for leaders and other specific staff groups
A model process for undertaking strategic EIA
Summary of conclusions and key recommendations
Practical tools and information
EIA and the law in Scotland
Equality Impact Assessment for colleges and universities is a legal requirement and is part of the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties)(Scotland) Regulations 2012.
The Scottish specific duties require that colleges and universities:
- Have ‘due regard’ to the three main needs of the general equality duty. The main needs of the general equality duty are summarised as:
- Eliminating discrimination
- Advancing equality of opportunity
- Fostering good relations
In meeting the requirement to undertake EIAs, colleges and universities must:
- Assess the impact of decision making and developing or revising new policies or practices against the general equality duty;
- Consider relevant evidence relating to people who share a protected characteristic;
- In developing policies or practices, take account of the results of any assessment;
- Publish the results of the assessment.
Human rights considerations in EIA
Some public bodies and particularly those with a social justice focus (such as Police Scotland), use a human rights model to conduct EIA.
In developing this EIA guidance, external expertise was sought to consider the relevance of recommending a human rights approach to EIA.
Consideration was given to both the benefits and drawbacks of this approach in the context of the college and university sector. Generally, human rights based assessments are carried out by authorities operating within specific and relevant contexts, such as social care or justice.
Given the differences in context and environment, this guidance does not explicitly recommend adopting a human rights model for the sector at this point.
This guidance focuses on a traditional approach to EIA, primarily based on assessing equality impact for protected characteristic groups, with some suggestions about broader equality and widening access considerations.
As part of a strategic approach to EIA, institutions may however find it helpful to consider broad human rights principles, alongside core equality principles, for specific areas of activity such as access, participation, opportunity and fair treatment within education.
The College Development Network (CDN) has adopted a tailored human rights-based approach to EIA for its own organisational use; institutions may find this a useful point of reference in considering equality and access issues. The CDN guidance includes useful ‘prompts’ to consider issues from a human rights perspective. See a CDN Equality and Human Rights Impact Assessment (EHRIA) form completed for an Outcome Agreement.
Practical Guidance for Scottish colleges and universities
Guidance was developed by Advance HE, in collaboration with a number of institutions and partners, as part of a joint project which took place during 2018 and 2019.
The project focused on considering strategic Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) and developing inclusive strategy, as a detailed and complex area of work to equality impact assess. A clear aim of the project was to provide a model for EIA of any area of strategy.