SEED School Promotions Committee EDI Review

09 Jul 2026

Fair leadership and progression is one of our core EDI priority areas in SEED. As part of this, we have committed to an annual statistical review of outcomes from the School Promotions Committee.

This review does not look at final outcomes from academic promotions applications, which are signed off by Faculty, but allows us to look at any significant differences between the success of people with different protected characteristics when considered by our School level Promotions Committee, made up of senior leadership in SEED.

All colleagues sitting on this panel are required to do EDI training, and we consider issues of EDI throughout the process, overseen by the Head of School and EDI Director. This analysis however serves as an additional check on our processes.

We cannot share the very granular details of this widely in the school, to protect the confidentiality of those who have applied for promotion. But it is obviously important that we update you as far as we can on our findings.

Our approach

We investigated differences in School support for three different categories:

·       Gender

·       Ethnicity

·       Contract type (T/S or T/R)

Our statistical approach has been to look for differences in rating and success between the traditionally dominant groups (men, white colleagues, T&R contracts) and traditionally underrepresented groups (women, racially minoritised, T&S contracts).

Given small numbers we have not been able to look at disability or explore intersectionality in the same way statistically. We have however considered this in our broader analysis. We have also considered some other areas where data is available from the People Directorate and will continue to refine this process over the coming years.

Findings so far

·       When we look across 2025 and 2026 School Promotions Committees there were no concerning patterns of significant differences between the rates of success of different groups.

·       Last year, women had a statistically significant (p<0.001) different rate of success to men and a higher success rate than men, but this year there was no significant difference between groups

·       Last year, racially minoritised colleagues/colleagues who selected ‘prefer not to say’ did not have a significant difference in their rate of success to white colleagues, and this year we see a similar finding with no significant difference between ratings when looking at A/B grades combined as opposed to C/D grades

·       Last year, T/S colleagues had a statistically significant different rating distribution to T/R colleagues with a higher rate of success. This year, there is no significant difference when looking at A/B grades combined as opposed to C/D grades.

Other specific patterns at a more granular level we cannot share to ensure confidentiality is upheld.

Preliminary conclusions and next steps

One important thing to acknowledge is that many EDI related issues concerning academic promotion and progression occur before applications to promotion are looked at. This initiative therefore needs to be seen as part of a broader series of changes, all aiming to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to develop and progress in SEED.

Proportionally we receive applications from excellent numbers of women, global majority and disabled staff, as compared to the broader balances in the school. In 2025 one of the conclusions of our report was that we were concerned about low number of global majority academics applying for promotion to Reader or Professor. In 2026 this does not come out as such a concern, which is good to see. We have seen a drop in applications from women from 2025 to 2026, now with roughly equal numbers to men (and this is true at Reader and Professor level which is positive).

Over the coming years, we will continue our focus on giving colleagues appropriate feedback on potential applications at department level, and feedback from School Promotions Committee; running accessible hybrid workshops ahead of the promotions cycle; providing greater clarity for those with mitigating circumstances on how to communicate these.

We also plan to focus more on ensuring that part-time colleagues and those on ‘non-standard contracts’ are supported in their progression and hope to be able to look at this in future analyses (depending on numbers). We will also now run this statistical analysis annually, in order that any patterns are identified and actions taken to respond as appropriate.