trained members of staff who will facilitate good practice across the College
and monitor performance against equality based targets.
2.5.7 Each of the existing Colleges has developed expertise in various areas in
terms of supporting learners from different backgrounds and/or with additional
learning needs. This expertise will in future benefit a larger and more diverse
learner population.
2.6 Challenges and Risks
The merger of the three Colleges will offer the following challenges:
2.6.1 Continuing to meet our statutory duties, including the development of a Single
Equality Scheme incorporating all nine protected characteristics, during the
merger implementation process;
2.6.2 Developing appropriate management structures to assist in future policy
development, involvement, consultation and implementation;
2.6.3 Moving from simply meeting equal opportunities through the social justice
model to embracing/managing diversity by the business case model;
2.6.4 Ensuring equality based impact assessment is carried out on the decision to
merge;
2.6.5 Ensuring equality based impact assessments are carried out for all policies
and procedures across all nine protected characteristics;
2.6.6 Ensuring arrangements are made at an early stage of the merger integration
process to involve diverse groups of staff, learners and stakeholders to gather
views on proposed changes to policies, procedures and/or services;
2.6.7 Communicating and raising awareness amongst staff, learners and
stakeholders of the new College's approach to equality and diversity issues;
2.6.8 Setting equality based targets linked to learner recruitment, retention and
achievement;
2.6.9 Setting equality based targets for staff recruitment etc
2.6.10 Establishing an integrated MIS system capable of collecting and analysing
learner and staff equality monitoring data;
Appendix 4: Merger Proposal - Organisation & Learner Development
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2.6.11 Embedding and publicising procedures to deal with incidents of direct and
indirect discrimination, victimisation and harassment.