Specific duties: The employment duty 

 

All public authorities bound by the general duty are also subject to the employment duty, unless specifically exempted (as set out in the Statutory Orders).

The Commission has published its own employment monitoring data for 2006, which is available in race equality duty documents under 'Compliance and enforcemengt'.

All public authorities bound by the employment duty (see Appendix 3 of the Code of Practice and subsequent Orders) must monitor, by racial group, the numbers of:

  • staff in post
  • applicants for employment, training and promotion.

Where an authority has 150 or more full-time staff, they should also monitor the number of staff from each racial group who:

  • receive training
  • benefit or suffer detriment as a result of its performance assessment procedures
  • are involved in grievance procedures
  • are the subject of disciplinary procedures
  • cease employment

Authorities are also required to publish the results of this monitoring annually.

The employment duty is not just about collecting numbers and counting staff.  Authorities must ensure they are meeting the general duty in exercising its employment functions.  Therefore in order to meet the general duty, public authorities should use the above monitoring information to:

  • see if there are differences in the way racial groups are treated
  • investigate the underlying reasons for the differences
  • deal with any unfairness, disadvantage or possible discrimination.

Please go to race equality duty documents for more guidance on this section.

On this page

 

The employment duty in education

The specific duties on employment do not apply directly to schools. The main responsibility for monitoring employment rests with local education authorities (LEAs), and education authorities (EAs) in Scotland. All schools are expected to give their LEA/EA ethnic monitoring data on their staff in their regular returns, so that the authority can meet the duty.

Further and higher education institutions must as stated above monitor by racial group staff recruitment and career progress. Please see paragraphs 6.39 - 6.41 of the statutory code of practice for further details.

In addition, further and higher education institutions must provide data on the number of teaching staff at their establishment by racial group to bodies such as the Learning and Skills Council for England, the Higher Education Funding Councils for England and Wales, and the National Council for Education and Training for Wales, so that they can meet their respective duties.

Each of these bodies must monitor by racial group the number of teaching staff at the establishments for which they are responsible and must take reasonably practicable steps to publish this data each year.


Back to top^