This field records the religious belief of the member of staff, on the basis of their own self-assessment

Mandatory for providers in England and Wales, optional for providers in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Religion or belief is recorded on the basis of the member of staff's own self-assessment.

The purpose of collecting this data is to ensure the providers' policies and practices do not discriminate against people observing a religion or belief.

England and Wales: What is your religion?

Scotland and Northern Ireland: What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?

Please note that the coverage of the coding frame is different for each of the administrations, only codes that are marked with 'Y' can be used for that administration. This is shown in the following table:

Staff should be presented with this question every year.

Definitions:

Prefer not to say – staff member doesn’t want to declare the information.

Not available – the provider is not able to get this data in order to send it to HESA.

Advance HE has a number of resources relating to gathering information across the protected characteristics covered by the Equality Act 2010. If you have any further queries regarding equality monitoring, please view https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/.