HM Treasury event for disabled students and graduates – sign up today

The Government department Her Majesty’s Treasury is launching a graduate recruitment exercise this month and are very keen to encourage as many disabled students and graduates as possible to apply.

To promote the opportunities to disabled students and graduates, HM Treasury are running a disability recruitment event.

Tuesday 13 September
1pm – 2:30pm
Treasury offices, London

It will include short presentations from:

• Senior Treasury officials such as the Treasury’s Permanent Secretary
• Existing disabled staff in the Treasury discussing their career in the Treasury and the support the Treasury provides to enable them to do their work to the best of their ability
• HR officials giving advice about the application process

Followed by a Q&A.

Please email Jazmin Glassborow to attend and for more information today. Please  also include any details about what additional arrangements you will require including for the event itself, accessing the Treasury building or travelling to the event.

The ethnicity-attainment link in Higher Education

Higher Education (HE) statistics in the UK show ethnicity to have a big influence on how well a British student performs at university.

• White students are more likely to achieve a good (2:1 or 1st) degree than a 3^rd
• Black students are 3x less likely to get a good degree than White students
• Asian students are 50% less likely to get a good degree than White students.

A similar story has continued over the last 15 years.  Although most Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students study at the post-1992 universities, they are outperformed by BME students studying at the Russell Group universities (20 of the top UK HE institutions).

Some factors can increase the odds of BME students getting good degrees such as

• Being older
• Being female
• Studying full-time
• Studying Medicine or Dentistry
• Studying combined degrees.

Differences in exam results achieved on application to university can only account for half of the gap between White and BME students.  However, Chinese medical students who arrive at university with the highest grades often fall behind by the time they graduate.

More research into this problem could show transparency in HE and inspire action for change by firstly, finding the causes of the under-attainment and secondly, creating solutions to reduce the gap amongst British students.

This blog was written after attending the UCL Race Equality Group event, Understanding the under-attainment of students from Black and Minority Ethnic Groups.  At the event, Dr John Richardson (The Open University) presented a lecture about Ethnicity and attainment in higher education whilst Dr Katherine Woolf (UCL Division of Medical Education) discussed Ethnicity and the academic performance of UK medical students and doctors.  A video of the event is available on the UCL Equalities website.