Dear Sarah
Thanks very much for circulating this. I
was at the ACAS conference on age yesterday at which they announced that their
guidance was finally available and we have created a link for it to our own
website. Later today hopefully we will create a link to the ACAS age pages as
well so that you can find out more about the range of support services they are
offering which include a helpline service and training days on the regulations.
ECU will now need to update some of the
answers to the FAQs that are on our website so that will happen over the next
week or so.
The NIACE website and helpline (separate
recent email) should be able to help you with student issues.
ECU will shortly be recruiting a Senior
Policy Officer to work on Age issues as a result of Robyn’s
recent internal promotion to SPO disability and my own move to part time
working. More on this shortly. The post will also be available on secondment.
With good wishes meantime
Liz
From:
HE Administrators equal opportunities list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sarah Lewis
Sent: 27 April 2006 13:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: age discrimination-
ACAS guidance-
Colleagues
The acas website (www.acas.org.uk) has been updated !
Sarah
From:
HE Administrators equal opportunities list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Liz Sutherland
Sent: 25 April 2006 16:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: age discrimination- ACAS
guidance- student issues
Dear colleagues
Just to let you know the ACAS guidance Age and the Workplace on the age
regulations is still not up on their website. The ACAS publications
department is however now taking orders for print copies tel 0870 242 9090.
Their official line is that the guidance will now be up ‘late this
week’ on the web.
I have actually managed to get a copy of
the guidance. It includes some helpful model letters relating to the new
requirements round retirement and some helpful flow charts which I am sure HR
staff will find useful. Please do pass this
information on to your HR colleagues.
However, the title of the guidance is an
indication of its bias towards employment-facing matters. On the student-facing
issues (or what ACAS term ‘vocational training’) I am disappointed
to say that despite the efforts of ECU and others the extent to which the
guidance provides helpful advice on these issues is very limited. Rather than
deal with the issue in any detail ACAS decided to commission the DfES to write
an article on age and vocational training for the DTI website. The first
version of that article (and the one that is still up on the DTI site) is not
at all clear and we understand is currently being rewritten. We will let you
know when the revised version becomes available.
Meanwhile those of you with
student-related queries might find it helpful to know we have just found out
that NIACE (the National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education)
has been commissioned by the DTI to offer a range of support services to
the post-16 education sector on student-facing aspects of the new legislation.
The NIACE website has a helpful guide to the regulations written from the perspective
of post-16 education providers which goes further than ACAS guidance does
(though it won’t of course have the same status in law as ACAS guidance
which is in effect a voluntary code of practice).
NIACE is also offering a helpline service
to assist ANY post-16 education provider (and students/trainees) which you
might find helpful. From now on and until we are resourced to tackle
age-related student issues we would like to suggest that if you have queries on
student-related matters you go to NIACE in the first instance.
http://www.niace.org.uk/Research/older_bolder/Projects/AgeRegulations/default.htm
NIACE is also holding a conference on June
15 in
Given that as yet ECU is not resourced to
tackle age-related student issues, the NIACE resource could be a great help to
all of us, including to ECU. Looking to the longer term, I will be meeting with
NIACE and with LSC to discuss what we might be able to do jointly in the future
round guidance on student related issues.
All the best
Liz