College should be sanctioned if they fail to enter diverse cohorts to WorldSkills UK competitions, a leading psychologist has told Tes.
Former professional basketball player and psychologist John Amaechi said that colleges must be measured against the type of students they put forward for the regional and national skills competitions.
His comments come as WorldSkills UK published research into the diversity of their competitors, training managers, tutors, employers and judges. Mr Amechi sat on the advisory board for the research.
In detail: 90% white, 67% male: The WorldSkills diversity crisis
More: WorldSkills UK diversity report: 6 things we've learnt
Background: Why more diversity would make WorldSkills even better
The research, produced by the Social Innovation Partnership, revealed that 67 per cent of the WorldSkills UK competitors in 2018 were male, and 90 per cent of competitors white British or Irish.
Mr Amechi said: “I would say [to colleges], how is it that you are in this kind of area and yet you manage to attract only men or women to this programme or that programme? What are you going to do about that? I’d say to them, in the same way that the government is saying to most businesses now, it’s time for you to be measured against this and challenged on this.
“How can you be an East London college and yet only send through white candidates? How is that possible? And if that’s the case we need to start acting punitively and say you can only submit a reduced number of people. There has to be some stick to go along with the carrot of this.”
Positive discrimination?
Christopher Pitts, research and development officer at AoC Sport, WorldSkills' competition organising partner, also sat on the advisory board and told Tes that imposing sanctions could lead to positive discrimination.
He said: "It's never something from this holistic, equality point of view that you want to do. You don't want to include quotas or sanctions or minimal operating targets because there's a danger there of positive discrimination which isn't what we want to see, the competitions are there as a relatively elitist platform, we are trying to find the best people in the country to represent the UK and their sectors.
"The only way I could see that kind of system working is a more stringent look at the KPIs of the competition's organising partners. Rather than put the onus on the college, put the onus on the organisation partners, the people responsible for the individual sectors to increase their registration figures at least in more than just a gender spilt."
