Gender Pay Gap Commentary 2020

The RNCM aims to recruit the very best staff and is committed to ensure that all staff have equal access to promotional opportunities and development.

Whilst the College’s gender pay gap is smaller than both the sector average and the National average, it remains determined to ensure that equality of opportunity is demonstrated across all of its activities. Whilst recognising that modest staff numbers can have a disproportionate impact on statistics, its response to the gender pay gap is to understand and remove any actual or perceived barriers to entry or progression to more senior roles.

The RNCM has formal job and performance evaluation processes, and continues to work to attract and retain more females in roles within upper quartile pay grades. The music industry, where academic and professional success can involve unsocial hours and a significant amount of travel, presents particular challenges, but the RNCM is determined to counter these issues, offering flexibility in how it conducts its teaching and research to encourage female colleagues to progress.

Although the coronavirus (COVID-19) has had a substantial impact on the national labour market hours worked and pay, it appears to have had little impact on the gender pay gap in April 2020.

Key statistics

• RNCM median pay gap has reduced to 0% (2020) from 0.02% (2019) in favour of males, compared to 13% [1] in the HE sector and 5%[2] nationally.
• Median pay gap for professional services staff is -4.5% (in favour of females).
• Academic staff median pay gap is 11%.
• RNCM staff gender balance is 54% male, 46% female.

The RNCM already:

• Uses skill-based assessment tasks in recruitment
• Uses structured interviews for recruitment, linked to the person specification
• Provides unconscious bias training, and equality and diversity training to all staff
• Encourages salary negotiation by showing salary ranges and publishing salary scales
• Provides transparent promotion, pay and reward processes, and reports equality data to the Equality, Diversity and Equality Forum
• Provides shared parental leave
• Encourages flexible working; practical teaching staff have flexibility in determining their working patterns.

The RNCM will:

• Encourage greater engagement with promotion processes within the academic / tutor community to ensure staff and managers are aware of criteria
• Focus on learning and participation activities for under-represented groups to encourage greater gender equality by instrument to support a more gender balanced pool of potential employees for the future.

[1] Data provided by UCEA and sourced from ONS ASHE 2020.

[2] Data sourced from ONS ASHE 2020.