Equality and Diversity at the Open University

Implementing the Open University’s new equality scheme

For 40 years, the Open University has been promoting social justice and equality of opportunity, enabling individuals to achieve their potential. It's core to their mission and it's as important today as it was when they were founded.

They have now developed a new equality scheme which brings all their existing schemes and policies into one place under a shared vision that will create a University community and a society where individuals are treated with dignity and respect, where inequalities are challenged and where we anticipate and respond positively to different needs and circumstances.

- On Tuesday 16 February 2010, the University launched its new equality scheme which incorporates our disability, gender and race schemes and includes for the first time our commitments and actions across a much wider range of individual characteristics, including age, caring and dependency responsibilities, gender identity, religion or belief and sexual orientation.

Baroness Margaret Prosser of Battersea, OBE, Deputy Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission talked to us about ‘education, opportunity and equality’. We were also joined by Will Swann, Director, Students, who chaired the event and Fraser Woodburn, University Secretary, who outlined some of the major challenges and opportunities in implementing this scheme over the next 3 years.

Source: Open University Contact jml Training and Consultancy for your Diversity and Equality Training at: http://www.jml-training.com/Diversity.htm