NTU’s Vice Chancellor launches second Race Equality Action Plan

NTU's Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Peck launches second Race Equality Action Plan

At NTU, we are committed to creating an inclusive culture where all our community can reach their full potential.

We have achieved much. However, we have to recognise that all of us must continue to address the policy, practice, and personal factors that can lead to NTU falling short of this commitment.  Thus, we have developed our second Race Equality Action Plan (REAP2).

NTU’s progress to date

We have delivered much of what we set out in our first Race Equality Action Plan (REAP1). Our University Executive Team and our Board of Governors have received white privilege and anti-racism training.  We have created online versions of this training for all colleagues and students.

We have diversified further the membership of our Board of Governors. We have set up the University Shadow Executive Team.  We have reviewed our induction materials for both colleagues and students to be explicit that NTU operates a zero-tolerance policy against racism and to ensure our community know how to report hate crimes should they need.

We have set up supportive systems for both students and staff to discuss experiences that trouble them and decide whether to make formal complaints.

We are enabling colleagues from BAME communities to train and volunteer as panel members to support NTU recruitment processes and are working to expand this into complaints and grievance panels.

Our approaches to Black History Month and Black Leadership Programme for students are now established. I continue to provide mentoring support to colleagues from a Black, Asian and/or minority ethnic background.

How was REAP2 created and what does it say?  

Our second plan builds on our accomplishments to date and focuses on the areas of improvement our first action plan helped us identify. Our plan has been developed in collaboration with Nottingham Trent Students’ Union (NTSU), our Race Equality Charter Self-Assessment Team and NTU colleagues from a wide range of diverse backgrounds.  We have reviewed three years of employee and student life cycle data to inform our next steps.

REAP2 includes action in the following areas:

• strengthen how we support and engage diverse voices within our decision-making processes, particularly through our colleague networks;
• sustain an open institutional dialogue about race and equality through our Let’s Talk About… series;  and
• expand our anti-racism education programme for both colleagues and students.

We have work still to do. I echo the words from twelve months ago when we launched our first action plan. We are on a journey, a journey that is longer and more challenging than we would wish it to be. But it is an essential journey to take if we are to reach our desired destination and goal: to become an anti-racist institution.  We have through these action plans set ourselves a road map with a set of milestones for us to achieve, designed to help us make and mark our progress along the way.

With each step we take, we will stay focussed and remain steadfast to challenge racism and inequality at NTU.

Many thanks for your continued support.

Professor Edward Peck