What are National Equality Outcomes?

Too many people – students and staff – still face discrimination and barriers to opportunity in Scotland’s further and higher education settings.

Since 2020 the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) has worked in partnership with Britain’s equality regulator, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). This is a partnership we believe to be the first of its kind in the UK.

Both organisations recognised the important work Scottish colleges, universities and student associations had already done to tackle inequalities. But by coming together, our aim was to develop and support a collective response to the most urgent and persistent inequalities in the sector.

Fast forward to 2023, and the EHRC and SFC published the Tackling Persistent Inequalities Together report.

This report introduced National Equality Outcomes – setting nationally agreed targets to address inequality and discrimination. This included outcomes relating to:

• Success and retention rates of students.
• Satisfaction levels of disabled students in relation to reasonable adjustments.
• The mental health of students and staff.
• Steps taken to address harassment in relation to protected characteristics.
• Proportionate representation of staff, boards and courts.

Evaluating the early impact of the NEOs

To better understand institutions’ experiences of implementation and the early impact of the NEOs, the EHRC commissioned an independent evaluation in early 2026. Of 43 institutions, 34 agreed to complete a survey. Qualitative interviews were held with staff from 12 institutions, as well as key stakeholders.

The research also examined the partnership between the EHRC and SFC and identified future support needed to strengthen the NEOs approach.

What the evaluation found

We found that the NEOs approach has largely been successfully integrated into the Scottish further and higher education sectors, building on pre-existing equality initiatives due to its more targeted nature. The NEOs have supported institutions to gain internal buy-in for equality work and focus their work on specific protected characteristics. They have also supported institutions’ ability to monitor and report on impact.

As most institutions who have adopted the NEOs to date did so in April 2025, we recognise that it will take time for the full impact of the NEOs approach to become clear. Nonetheless, the results of the evaluation are encouraging. 59% of respondents reported that the NEOs make addressing persistent inequalities easier, compared with previous approaches. Among institutions who adopted the NEOs in 2023, this figure increased to 89%.

While most institutions emphasised the need for more time to determine effectiveness of the NEOs model, two-thirds felt that the NEOs would be effective in reducing persistent inequalities in the future.

Next steps

We’re grateful to the institutions who contributed to the evaluation. We plan to engage further with institutions at interactive webinars to discuss the findings in more depth. This feedback, alongside the findings from the evaluation, will be used by the EHRC and SFC to design further support to ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of the NEOs.

Encouraged by the results of the evaluation, we are confident that the NEOs will continue to help to address persistent inequalities and make lasting positive differences to people’s lives through Scotland’s colleges and universities.

The EHRC report Evaluating National Equality Outcomes in further and Higher Education is now available on the EHRC website.

Dr Hannah Telling is the Scotland Research Manager at the Equality and Human Rights Commission