Student equality, diversity and inclusion report 2019 Introduction

On these pages you will find some initial information and performance indicators related to disability, ethnicity and gender for students. These are protected characteristics where we have sufficient data to warrant publication.

Notes

  • Advance HE use the term ‘disabled students’ to refer to those students who indicated that they are disabled on their Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) student record. ‘Non-disabled students’ is used to refer to those who indicated that they are not disabled, or whose disability status is unknown by their institution.
  • We are using broad race and ethnicity categories of ‘Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME)’ and ‘White’. If it becomes possible in the future to report on a broader range of categories without identifying individuals, we will provide analyses of race and ethnic gaps that are more fine-grained and include sub-categories within the broad ethnic groups.
  • In terms of gender, we are using the binary categories of men and women. If it becomes possible in the future to report on a broader range of categories without identifying individuals, we will provide analyses of gender that are more fine-grained and include categories that individuals have indicated is their preferred self-identification.
  • Advance HE’s Equality in higher education: student statistical report (2019) publishes data pertaining to the year 2017-2018. This is the most recent publication and will therefore be used, where appropriate, for higher education benchmarking.
  • The relevant benchmarking data has been sourced from Advance HE. Advance HE produce annual statistical reports based on Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA) data which look at the continuation of first-year first-degree students. Unfortunately, the University of St Andrews is unable to replicate this data as HESA use the full UK dataset to track movements of students between higher education (HE) institutions. St Andrews can, however, provide a close match based on our HESA returns. As St Andrews is unable to track the movement of students between HE institutions, it is likely that some students who are recorded as ‘no longer in HE’ may have transferred to other institutions; this means that the University’s first-year continuation rate is likely to be underreported, and the rate of withdrawal likely to be over-reported.
  • We have rounded percentages to one decimal place.

If you would like to make a comment about the information provided here, have any ideas for addressing identified gaps, or wish to flag some related activity you are undertaking or aware of, please email peoplestrat@st-andrews.ac.uk.