Together, with the Students’ Union, we are committed to close the degree attainment gap for our Black students and other student profiles with diversity characteristics.

In our Access and Participation Plan for 2020/2021 to 2024/2025 we outline the following priorities for our Black students around access, continuation, and progression:

• To reduce the non-continuation gap between Black and white students from 3% to 0%
• To reduce the attainment gap between Black and white students from 42% to 24%
• To reduce the graduate employment gap between Black and white students from 6% to 0%

Success will be delivered through collaboration, challenge, personal, and professional development, and policy and procedural changes.

Our strategy will be informed by the study of sector best practice, case studies, and reports published by HESA, Advance HE, Universities UK, and the Office for Students.

Our University’s approach is underpinned by strong leadership, with the Senior Management Team and Governing Body leading by example and taking responsibility for change, with strong Black, Asian, Mixed Heritage, and Minority Ethnic representation.

Closing Our Gap steering group

The Closing our Gap Steering Group provides strategic direction in developing a holistic approach to resolving the attainment gap. The group provides oversight of activity to reduce this gap, ensuring an integrated and University-wide approach is developed.

The work and activities associated with Closing Our Gap are complex and varied. Therefore, in order to organise our thinking and planning, a strategic framework has been developed. The framework provides a clear overview of the work with associated timescales and will be used to track and monitor over time. Through consultations with staff and students across the institution, we have identified work strands that have been grouped under three categories: Culture, Curriculum, and Community.

Contact: Mary Makinde, Strategic Lead: Closing our Gap

At CCCU we believe in educating the whole person. Fundamentally, we believe that education should provide an opportunity for all students and staff to see themselves in the world and provide opportunities for the co-creation of knowledge.

What is decolonising the curriculum?

Decolonising the curriculum goes beyond the reading list and the classroom. It requires us to identify colonial structures and systems that are embedded within our education system and work towards dismantling these. This requires a paradigm shift in our understanding of knowledge and how knowledge is acquired, disseminated, and valued.

Through decolonising we aim to develop practices and policies that amplify all voices and enrich the curricular and learning experiences of all students.

Why is there a need to decolonise?

Through the omission of marginalised voices, the current curricular does not truly reflect the diversity of our students, staff, and the wider society. Through the addition of previously omitted voices and perspectives, we can begin to build a curricular that is diverse, inclusive, and reflective of our staff, students, and society. We are developing a community that fosters good relations and a sense of belonging in which everyone is heard and valued.

The impact of not decolonising can have far-reaching impact beyond Higher Education. For instance, the impact of not decolonising the health care curriculum to include the presentation of illness and diseases on Black and Brown skin can result in poor health care outcomes for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities.

Is decolonising different from diversifying?

Yes. Diversifying provides limited opportunities to challenge the hierarchies and inequalities embedded within the curricular and our society. Decolonising the curriculum goes deeper. Decolonising provides us with an opportunity to critically reflect, dismantle our assumptions, unlearn, relearn, and rebuild together.

Our Decolonising the Curriculum Health Check provides us with an opportunity to reflect, re-build, and co-create knowledge in which we are all reflected.

There are a range of initiatives taking place across the University that demonstrate how we are listening to, partnering with, and supporting our Black students to succeed.

Bridging the gap to leadership

Alongside the University of Brighton, we embarked on an exciting collaborative leadership placement opportunity highlighting the urgent need to tackle issues around inequalities experienced by Black, Asian, mixed heritage, and minority ethnic students whilst on placement in health care settings.

Funded by Health Education England, the project provided placement opportunities for up to 12 students and focused on the experiences of Black, Asian, mixed heritage, and minority ethnic students in their practice placements. Students from both universities worked collaboratively to shape the project, working with representatives from each institution, placement provider organisations, and the supporting professional bodies.

IGNITE: Bridging the Black attainment gap in the Business School

The aim of the IGNITE programme is to identify and unlock black students’ potentials through mentoring.

It starts with a conversation with individual Black students about their ambitions and challenges to help to question any assumptions and instil a sense of belief around what can be achieved. A learning plan is developed for each student to meet their specific needs to help them to reach their goals, and this is supported by structured peer-to-peer group study.

The programme has resulted in significant grade improvements including, for the first time in many years, a young Black (Home) student graduating with a 1st Class Honours in the Business School.

The Student Voice: Learning from the student experience, School of Law, Policing and Social Science

The School asked their Black, Asian, Mixed Heritage and Minority Ethnic students about their learning experiences to help them look beyond the data and understand what changes they could introduce to support their Black, Asian, mixed heritage, and minority ethnic students.

Based on the feedback the School’s Black, Asian, mixed heritage, and ethnic minority working group, we are now looking at:

• Curriculum development
• BAME student ambassadors
• Industrial BAME student mentors.

We are building a sense of belonging by:

• Learning names
• Multi-cultural case studies
• Diverse reading lists
• Diverse assessments
• Valuing student contributions
• Carefully timetabled activities e.g. assessments during Ramadan.

The 3C Scheme, Law Programme

The Law programme is taking a team approach to address the attainment gap in Law. The CLAG (Closing the Law Attainment Gap) team developed a strategy that meaningfully intersects with multiple aspects of student life at CCCU under three main heads: Curriculum, Community, and Culture: The ‘3C scheme’. Some of the measures implemented and suggested under each aspect of the 3C scheme include:

Curriculum

• Decolonising the curriculum and embedding more race into the Law curriculum
• Trialling anonymous marking in a couple of L4 modules
• Providing more assistance for students around following citation guidelines closely and avoiding plagiarism
• A Super PAT (personal academic tutor) that students can approach regarding matters relating to race, inclusivity etc.

Community

• Making law students more aware of the Black, Asian, Mixed Heritage and Minority Ethnic students attainment gap
• Appointing Black, Asian, mixed heritage, and minority ethnic students reps for each year and including Black, Asian, mixed heritage, and minority ethnic students committee member positions in the CCCU Student Law Society
• Organise social events that reflect and celebrate multiculturalism and create spaces of belonging for BAME students.

Culture

Improving staff/student awareness of racial harassment.

• Law team to work towards a cultural shift where inclusivity, diversity, and equality are taken into account from an intersectional perspective when making decisions
• Obtaining training for the Law team around micro-aggressions and unconscious bias.

You may want to reflect and to update your knowledge and understanding on race and race-related issues. So, we have put together a list of resources that you may find useful. 

Books to read

• Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch (2018)
• Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017)
• How To Be an Anti-racist by Ibram X. Kendi (2019)
• Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Saad (2020)
• Citizen by Claudia Rankine (2014)
• White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo (2018)
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
• When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Cullors (2018)
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (2017)
• The Good Immigrant: 21 Writers Explore What It Means To Be Black, Asian, And Minority Ethnic In Britain Today edited by Nikesh Shukla (2016)
• Tackling the roots of racism by Reena Bhavnani, Hedi Safia Mirza and Veena Meetoo (2005)
• Publishers Palgrave have made a number of books written about issues related to racism and books written by ethnic minority authors free in support of Black Lives Matter. 

How to access

Many of the above books are available from the CCCU Bookshop and Library.

• Available to loan or online e-books - Check availability via LibrarySearch

Journals and articles to read

• Institute of Race Relations - Dying for Justice
• The Four Bodies: A Holistic Toolkit for Coping with Racial Trauma
• Be an Ally by Cornell Health

Podcasts

• Show About Race podcast.
• Code Switch (NPR)
• Intersectionality Matters! hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw
• Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast
• Pod For The Cause (from The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights)
• Pod Save the People (Crooked Media)
• Seeing White

Video clips

• Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore - An Antipode Foundation Film
• Decolonising Education: How have schools failed black boys?
• Decolonising Education: Doing the "work" as a person of colour
• 5 tips for being an ally
• An Audience with Lady Phyll at CCCU - CCCU welcomed award winning and long time LGBT, feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial activist - Lady Phyll for a Public Lecture.
• Akala - Full address and Q&A at Oxford Union
• Films, documentaries and radio programs are available through Box of Broadcasts (BoB). View the Black History 365 playlist now.

Social media and websites

• Blacknet
• Race, Racism, Culture, and Resistance - A blog by Sociology Lecturer Harshad Keval
• TED Talk - An Interview with the founder of Black Lives Matter
• Guide to Allyship: An open source starter guide to help you become a more thoughtful and effective ally
• The UK isn't racist. A thread - Tweet from @kamanityrese

Explaining race and racism to children

• The Skin I'm In: A First Look at Racism by Pat Thomas, Lesley Harker (2003)
• Not My Idea: A book about Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham (2018)
• Let’s Talk About Race by Julius Lester, Karen Barbour (2008)
• The Skin You live In by Michael Tyler, David Lee Csicsko (2005)
• Anti-racism books for children
• Racism and violence - how to help kids handle the news
• Tips for talking to children about race and racism
  
• A Parent's Guide to Black Lives Matter.