Race Disparity Audit Report cites departmental evidence

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A new report published this week by the Women and Equalities Select Committee has cited evidence given by Professor Steve Strand (Professor of Education) on the educational indicators of the Race Disparity Audit – a programme examining the racial disparities in public services and across Government.

In his evidence to the review, Professor Strand demonstrated how education is key to later occupational, economic, health and well-being outcomes and to future social mobility more widely. His evidence stressed the importance of using differentiated ethnic categories rather than high level aggregations such as White/Black/Asian, and further argued for the importance of controlling for socio-economic factors to better understand the drivers of ethnic gaps in educational achievement. Professor Strand concluded that more high quality research was needed to address the ways in which multiple characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, SES and EAL interact and combine, in order to better understand the origins and drivers of achievement gaps and the implications for policy and intervention.

The Race Disparity Audit inquiry was launched in 2016 by Prime Minister Theresa May, with the first phase of the investigation aiming to identify, collate and present existing data on outcomes by race and ethnicity across public services – with the intention of influencing policy to solve the problems found.

Professor Strand’s research interests are in ethnic, social class and gender gaps in a wide range of educational outcomes such as achievement, progress, special education, exclusion, and he is particularly interested in the interface between equity and school effectiveness. He has worked extensively with Government departments, Local Authorities and individual schools on the analysis of pupil achievement data and school effectiveness. His methodological expertise is in the quantitative analysis of large and complex longitudinal datasets such as the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) and the National Pupil Database (NPD). He leads the Quantitative Methods (QM) hub in the department.

Download The House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee Race Disparity Audit report here.

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