Review of Strategies to Address Gender Inequalities in Scottish ...

CHAPTER THREE SURVEY OF LOCAL AUTHORITIESThe case study schools and authorities were identified through a brief survey, using aquestionnaire approach. Questionnaires were issued to 31 of the 32 local authorities(Appendix 1); only one authority declined the invitation to participate. While addressedto Directors of Education, or their equivalent, the covering letter asked that thequestionnaire be completed by whoever held responsibility for equity issues within thedirectorate. (The term ‘gender (in)equality’ was used for the sake of brevity, although itwas acknowledged that other terms might be used by authorities to reflect similarconcepts.)In the event, 25 of the original 32 were completed and returned (78%), most of whichwere completed by advisers or education officers whose remit included equity issues. Asthe numbers are relatively small, the actual figures are reported here.The purpose of the questionnaires was to determine the local authority’s approach togender inequalities issues and to identify potential case study schools, i.e. examples ofgood practice of specific gender-related strategies in operation. Authorities were alsoasked, where appropriate, to provide relevant documentation, such as policy statements,to the project team. Several respondents appeared to have had difficulty completingsome of the questions on the grounds that ‘gender’ has become part of a more generalinclusion policy and therefore difficult to separate out from other initiatives. A total of18 local authorities identified examples of where strategies had been developed(Appendix 2).3.1 Policy and planningNine of the respondents indicated that their authority had a written policy statement ongender (in)equality, 13 said it did not and 2 reported that a draft policy statement existed.Of the 9 with policy statements, 1 covered education establishments only, while 8covered all aspects of policy provision. Fourteen of the 25 reported that the authority’sImprovement Plan made reference to gender issues in schools.One question asked whether the authority would expect schools to have a written policyon gender (in)equality, regardless of whether a policy statement existed at authority level.Seven said that they would, while another 7 indicated they would not; the remainder didnot answer. They were then asked to estimate the percentages of educationalestablishments in each sector (pre-5, primary, secondary and special) that they thoughthad a policy, whether it was a requirement or not. Expectations varied from none to100% of all establishments. For example, 5 authorities expected 100% of establishmentsin all 4 sectors to have policies in place. Another authority expected 100% of allestablishments other than pre-5 to have a policy in place, while 2 other authoritiesexpected 100% of pre-5 establishments and between 50% and 80% of the others to haveone in place. It should be noted, however, that the documentation supplied by authoritiesdid not normally match the reported incidence of policies and practices (see Section 3.2).Authorities were asked to indicate, broadly, the nature of the policy for gender in schoolswithin their authority. Twenty authorities replied, all indicating that it was either anintegral part of the inclusion policy, permeated other policies or was a combination ofthese. No authority indicated that they had a stand-alone policy for gender. Commentsincluded:• Not necessarily a stand-alone policy on gender but all schools have an equalitypolicy.______________________________________________________________________________________Review of Strategies to 17 University of StrathclydeAddress Gender Inequalitiesand University of Glasgow