This BERA report aims to provide a clear, comprehensive account of the state of education as an academic discipline in universities. The report provides a detailed understanding of issues of equality, inequality, diversity and discrimination for academic staff working in universities.
The study was conducted in order to gain an understanding of the state of the discipline of education in the interests of addressing inequalities. It explored where certain markers of sameness and difference – in terms of characteristics of sex, ethnicity, age, disability, religious belief and nationality – may have affected staff employment between 2015 and 2020. This included analysing the percentages of staff, the proportions of groupings, and the rate of change in employment conditions.
The research revealed a series of concerning findings about general employment conditions for academic staff within education. These included: a smaller rate of growth in the number of staff employed in education than that of the UK HE sector generally; more staff in education were employed in senior grades than in junior grades, differing from the pattern in the UK HE sector generally; the proportion of staff on ‘research only’ contracts was significantly lower than in the UK HE sector as a whole.
The analysis of staff composition revealed possible inequalities, with notable differences between devolved nations. Overall, there were more female than male staff in education. However, the opposite was observed for particular minority ethnic groups, and for those whose primary nationality was not held in high-income countries.
Despite the smaller number of male staff in education overall, indications were that they were advantaged. Of the male staff, higher proportions were employed in ‘teaching and research’; in senior academic positions; at professorial level; and in senior management, than the proportions observed in female staff.