In accordance with its specific duties under the Equality Act 2010, the College has adopted the following two Equality objectives for the years 2020-21 to 2023-24, and will report below on progress in achieving them:
1 To promote good mental health among students and staff at the College.
2 To work towards greater gender equality at the College.
The College’s Equality work covers a much wider range than that referred to in these objectives, and further information is given about this below.
Report for the period Trinity Term 2020 to Hilary Term 2021:
Objective 1:
The principal activity in support of this objective has been a thoroughgoing review of the College’s student welfare provision, with input from students and staff in College and comparison with welfare provision at other colleges. This has resulted in proposals for a revised welfare system, with greater cohesion in its structure and clear separation between the welfare and discipline roles of the Deans. This new system will be operational from Michaelmas Term 2021.
Further information is provided below on other activities in the College in support of the promotion of good mental health among its members.
Objective 2:
Following extensive outreach work by the College under its Outreach Strategy for 2018-23, the composition of the student body has seen quite significant change. While in December 2018 40.7% of the College’s student population were female (compared with 46.7% in the University as a whole), this figure rose to 46.4% in December 2019 (compared with 47.8% for the University) and 48.2% in December 2020 (compared with 48.7% in the University), such that there is now only a very small difference between the College’s figures and those for the Oxford as a whole.
There has been some movement too in respect of the Gender Pay Gap.
The College’s most senior roles in the 2019-20 reporting year were held by majority male incumbents. In addition, the College has relatively low employee turnover in its senior positions, and while longevity of service has benefits, it can be a barrier to changing the gender balance in particular areas. However, Median pay in College is now higher for women than for men, and since the start of Gender Pay Gap reporting the Mean Gender Pay Gap has reduced as follows:
2016-17: 26.46%
2017-18: 27.88%
2018-19: 25.43%
2019-20: 19.12%
Teaching and research staff take considerable time developing the experience needed for career progression. This means that it is difficult for early career academics to reach more senior positions swiftly. It is also the case that, in recruiting to academic roles the vacancies are typically in highly specialised areas, which reduces the number of suitable candidates for a vacancy.
Stipendiary Fellows of the College receive a Housing Allowance which has been included when calculating the Gender Pay Gap. Associate Professors who are on joint appointments where Magdalen is the minor employer also receive the full Housing Allowance. This has significantly increased the hourly rate for these employees. Currently there is a 1:3.5 ratio of women to men in Associate Professor roles at Magdalen.
In its efforts to eradicate the Gender Pay Gap the College will continue to review its recruitment processes, focus on how to attract more women into the roles within the College where there is currently a preponderance of men, and ensure that all interviewers have received guidance about unconscious bias. The College will continue to ensure that at least one woman is shortlisted for interview for each senior post, and if this is not possible a justification for this will be submitted to the Human Resources Department.
The College has in place a generous Maternity policy which all staff (Academic and non-Academic) are entitled to from day one of employment, details of which are advertised in the further particulars for all vacancies, with the aim of attracting more applications from female candidates. In addition, the College’s shared parental leave pay policy mirrors the Maternity pay policy, to encourage men to take on more responsibility for caring for children.
The College has introduced more support for those with caring responsibilities (which still predominantly tend to fall to female employees) for both childcare and eldercare. These include a carers’ leave policy and an additional annual leave (unpaid) policy. The College continues to support flexible working practices for employees where job roles allow. The College is still seeking to establish a dedicated College nursery as well as transitional housing for families to attract more applications from female candidates. Plans for these are under development.
The College’s Gender Pay Gap for the reporting year 2019-20 is:
Median: -0.42%
Mean: 19.12%
Quartiles
Quartile |
No of Men |
No of Women |
No in Band |
% Men |
% Women |
Lower |
20 |
31 |
51 |
39% |
61% |
Lower Middle |
37 |
14 |
51 |
73% |
27% |
Upper Middle |
21 |
30 |
51 |
41% |
59% |
Upper |
36 |
15 |
51 |
71% |
29% |
Further details about the College’s Gender Pay Gap in previous years is available here: https://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/gender-pay-gap/.
Both of the College’s specific Equality Objectives for the period 2020-21 to 2023-24 also figure in much of the College’s Other Equality Work:
Between Trinity Term 2020 and Hilary Term 2021, Magdalen adapted its outreach provision to the new virtual educational environment created by the COVID-19 pandemic. In Trinity Term, 33 pre-organised events had to be cancelled, with many others that were yet to be arranged made impossible by COVID-19. Nevertheless, Magdalen conducted 76 events during this time. By the end of Hilary Term, this had involved approximately 2,000 participants (not including the 2,090 students who attended the University Remote Interview Workshops or the many more we have engaged with at HE fairs and the virtual Open Days). We have engaged directly with 59 of our link region schools, as well as engaging with pupils from across the country. We have 105 current undergraduates and graduates trained as student ambassadors, with 42 of them having been trained this academic year. Twenty-two members of the academic staff have participated in events as well.
Trinity Term 2020 saw the introduction of Magdalen’s first virtual outreach events in the form of several ‘Taster Days’ for Year 11-12 students to sign up to as individuals. By this means we reached 250 pupils, teachers, and parents from across our link regions. The success of these events has led us to incorporate this into our regular offering whereby we shall run two virtual taster days every school half-term. Creating asynchronous online content has been important to provide for students who are unable to attend live sessions. We have developed several talks for the Magdalen Youtube channel including a series of academic lectures and a ‘Magdalen in a Minute’ series of current students answering FAQs. We also developed a subject-specific resource pack to help students develop their interest in their subject outside of school.
Despite the cancellation of in-person residentials over the summer, we participated in various online programmes. We collaborated with Dr Tammie Bishop, part of the team led by Nobel Prize-winning Magdalen Fellow Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe, to give 15 Year 12 pupils a chance to participate in remote work experience at the Nuffield Department of Medicine. The pandemic allowed us to provide work experience in Oxford to students from our seven link regions who would have been unable to take part otherwise. The week involved lectures and workshops given by Tammie and her team, including a Q&A with Magdalen Professor Rob Gilbert and a mock tutorial with Samvid Kurkelar, who studied Biochemistry at Magdalen. We were able to still go ahead with our second year of the Law at Magdalen residential, led by Joe Sampson, by converting this into a three-day virtual event, which enabled us to triple our capacity to 90 Year 12 students. The event involved a combination of live and pre-recorded sessions, including student Q&As, academic work, and an opening lecture by Magdalen’s new President, Dinah Rose QC.
The in-person Humanities BAME Study Day scheduled for Easter 2020 at Magdalen had to be cancelled, but was replaced with a half-day online Virtual Humanities BAME Study Day in July. The event had financial support from the Humanities Division and was organised with University College, the History Faculty, and the English Faculty, with significant input from Magdalen Professor Siân Pooley. The event involved an admissions presentation, subject-specific lectures, and a student Q&A, as well as an introduction from the University’s Director of Undergraduate Admissions and Outreach, Samina Khan. The event is being expanded this year to involve all Humanities subject areas.
During Michaelmas and Hilary Terms, the College offered a full schedule of talks and workshops which schools could access digitally. In particular, we supported the University-wide effort to provide remote interview workshops to applicants from state school backgrounds, as well as running our own interview workshops for our link area. With the support of our academic tutors, we have launched a Talks with Tutors programme to allow individuals to access academic sessions to help boost their interest and understanding in a given subject. This has involved over a hundred participants so far, with more virtual talks scheduled for the Easter vacation and in Trinity Term.
This year we also launched two year-long programmes with the University of Cambridge – Next Steps Sheffield, and Progress2Uni in Nottinghamshire. Next Steps Sheffield is being run with Emmanuel College, and offers four online webinars – one for Year 11s and three for Year 12s. These focus on debunking myths about Oxford and supporting students to make a competitive application to university. Progress2Uni is being run with Peterhouse College, and is a sustained programme that was offered to all state schools in Nottinghamshire for able Year 10s to participate in. This five-module programme, involving pre-session tasks and live sessions focusing on introducing pupils to the possibility of attending university, will run throughout the year.
Finally, work is being done to support our offer-holders and our current undergraduate students. For the first time this year we have launched a post-offer scheme which began with sending a welcome pack to all Magdalen offer-holders. We have provided additional optional support for 22 of our offer-holders from under-represented backgrounds in the form of a virtual Welcome Morning, to introduce them to the College and to ask any questions they may have. We have also hired six current students as Access Mentors to provide 1-on-1 mentoring sessions to help offer-holders consider their offer and to provide support in their path to university. Additionally, we have also supported the Opportunity Oxford scheme this year, as we did last year. There is ongoing work by the Outreach Office to consult with current students via our new termly outreach forum about their experiences at Magdalen, with a particular focus on issues that disproportionately impact students from under-represented backgrounds. We hope that this will begin future projects to help our students have a smooth transition to university.
In College, increasing the accessibility of Magdalen’s buildings and grounds for disabled members of the College and visitors was one of the College’s Equality Objectives for the period 2016-17 to 2019-20, and the extensive work undertaken over that period is reported on in the above tile for that period. Further work continued over the period Trinity Term 2020 to Hilary Term 2021, as follows:
- Winter Common Room & Associated Areas. The project is now completed. Alongside the WCR there is the Ante Room, the Terry Newport Room, the Cardinal Wolsey Room, the Glazed Link, and the Sophia Sheppard Room. All existing and new dining rooms/areas are now fully accessible by incorporating lift access to connect ground and first floors, by providing automatic doors, and by the provision of an accessible WC.
- Projects in the planning stages include:
o Chapel – As part of an extensive refurbishment of the Chapel and Antechapel space, the existing PA system will be replaced with a new sound system that has a hearing loop to assist those with hearing impairments. We have obtained listed building consent for the full scope of the project, but at this stage funding has only been secured for part of the project.
o 1-7 Longwall St – An extensive refurbishment will include improvements to accessibility. The gates from Longwall Street leading into the courtyard at the rear of 1-7 Longwall Street will be automated, as will the entrance door and several internal doors. There are two existing accessible ensuite rooms which will be enlarged to bring the spaces into line with current regulations.
o Masterplan – some initial work has been undertaken to consider where improvements to accessibility can be made across the estate. These will be developed further through the remainder of the process.
A detailed account of the College’s regular provision for disabled students is given in the tile above for the 2012-13 to 2015-16 reporting period.
As a result of the pandemic, the exercise to monitor equality data on current staff was postponed this year. It continues to be the case that the majority of the College’s senior academic appointments are made jointly with the University. The University has gathered and published monitoring and statistical data and other Equality information in a series of reports available from:
http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/eop/policy/data/report/.
These reports incorporate data on a number of the College’s academic staff who hold a joint appointment with the University.
At the initiative of the College’s JCR and MCR in Trinity Term 2020 an advisory group was formed on ‘Tackling Racial Inequality in Magdalen’. The group has met twice, and work on a wide variety of proposals has been under way in the areas of increasing awareness of diversity within College, outreach initiatives, funding for BAME scholarships, College-organised cultural events, religion-based dietary options, equalities workshops, training, and historical investigation into the role of colonialism in the College’s past. This has led to various activities, including the contribution of information about Magdalen to the ‘Oxford and Colonialism’ website (https://oxfordandcolonialism.web.ox.ac.uk/magdalen-college), the allocation of funding for two student internships to research the history and legacy of colonialism at Magdalen, and fundraising for a BAME Scholarship in Law (in conjunction with the Law Faculty) and for a Black Academic Futures Scholarship.
Magdalen’s Tutors for Equality and Diversity organised an Equality and Diversity Forum in Michaelmas Term 2020, in which they engaged members of the outgoing MCR and JCR Committees (Presidents and Equality and Diversity representatives) in wide-ranging conversation. This provided a space for reflecting on what the College was doing well, what could be improved, and particular ways in which the lockdowns had impacted on Equality and Diversity outcomes. Additionally, the Tutors have participated in the College’s forum for tackling racial inequality in College (see below), and in the University’s Equality & Diversity Forum. Working closely with the Senior Dean, in Hilary Term 2021, they convened a College-wide consultation with the aim of exploring ways that the College could further support and celebrate its LGBTQIA members past and present. Other concrete actions have included:
- Encouraging participation in workshops, lectures and training events pertaining to Equality and Diversity occurring throughout the University.
- Supporting individual students and finding solutions to particular complaints and suggestions.
- Liaison with other members of the College’s Welfare Team, including attendance of weekly meetings during term and providing input into the Welfare Review. In celebration of Diwali, Magdalen’s Dining Hall was decorated with lights between 12 and 16 November 2020, and on Saturday 14 November 2020 a vegetarian Indian menu was served.
This year, the JCR has established an Equalities Committee in order to co-ordinate an intersectional approach to equality. With the input of the JCR, the College is in the process of setting up a multi-faith prayer room. A ‘cultural events’ fund has been established by the JCR, which is open for all students to fund cultural events of a celebratory or educational nature. There has been significant progress on making the JCR and MCR accessible, with plans being drawn up by an architect and passed at a JCR meeting. The JCR has established the post of socioeconomic officer, to help support the needs of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Across Trinity and Michaelmas Terms 2020, the MCR introduced into its constitution a new ‘Equality Subcommittee’ with a once-termly meeting focused specifically on topics affecting minorities within Magdalen, and has participated in the ‘Tackling Racial Inequality in Magdalen’ advisory group with the other common rooms, to emphasise equality spanning the influence of the College.
In conjunction with the above, the MCR and JCR have also mandated annual unconscious bias training for some of their committee members. Furthermore, beginning in Hilary Term 2021, the termly MCR termcard is reviewed by the Racial Equality, Women’s, LGBTQ+, and Disabilities Officers before finalisation, to ensure that it is free of bias.
The Transgender Flag, on a joint initiative between the JCR and MCR, flew for the first time in November 2020 to mark Transgender Awareness Month.