Analysis of Equality and Diversity within Staffing Data in UK Higher Education: Raising Questions about the State of the Discipline of Education

This study seeks to consider the heterogeneity of Education’s members to ascertain how enabling or constraining conditions are for access to academic employment, retention and flourishing, and awarding of assigned leadership roles. Synthesised data about Education in universities across all UK jurisdictions will be analysed, in order to gain a detailed understanding of the profile and career trajectories of academic staff to identify the points where the categorisation of staff, in terms of the protected characteristics of gender, ethnicity, faith/ belief, disability, age and nationality (and the intersections between them), impacts on their participation within education departments in the UK. Objectives of the research are to:
1. Investigate the two empirical datasets about the staff composition and career trajectories within Education across all UK HE, including England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland;
2. Map changing demographics in the past five years through descriptive analysis of differentiated data of gender, ethnicity, faith/ belief, known dis/ability, age, nationality, and their intersections;
3. Identify indicators of social dis/advantage for academics’ careers in Education, specifically in terms of appointment, contract type, retention, progression, assigned leadership and exiting the UK HE profession;
4. Discuss the findings in relation to published scholarship within UK and international research on the transformation of HE for equality.