Ratha Perumal

Ms Ratha Perumal

Academic Director for Inclusive Practices

Academic Director for Inclusive Practices

Office for Institutional Equity , School Of Education And Communities

Ratha is Academic Director for Inclusive Practices at the Office for Institutional Equity.

Ratha Perumal

OVERVIEW

I am an ex-lawyer working in Higher Education. Academic Director at the Office for Institutional Equity (OIE) at UEL; HPL & Graduate Teaching Fellow at Kings College London (KCL).

At both institutions, I've taught on undergraduate and master programmes. At UEL, I've held Programme Director roles at both levels; including curriculum & assessment design. I've supervised dissertations at UEL and KCL.

At UEL, I've recently taken on the role of Academic Director at the Office for Institutional Equity (OIE). The OIE has a wide remit to scrutinise and support institutional departments and Schools; to ensure teaching, student support, pedagogy and institutional structures achieve attainment and outcomes that are commensurate with the effort and ambitions of our students and staff.  We also undertake research projects - in collaboration with other institutional departments at UEL - to strengthen equity for students and staff.

Current research

  1. Developing a granular understanding the degree award gap in higher education, including factors that can contribute to its formation and persistence in a range of higher education institutional context(s).
  2. Examining university structures that can contribute to disparities in student attainment & outcomes in higher education; how student (protected) characteristics interact with institutional structures, and the impact of relational factors (in university spaces) on student attainment disparities.
  3. Investigating effective pedagogies that meaningfully support the educational engagement and progress of multilingual learners (or, pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL).

Publications and other dissemination

My scholarly work explores aspects of educational inequity that produce disparities in attainment, such as the degree-award gap experienced by racially-minoritised students. I also research effective EAL pedagogies for multilingual learners in primary education contexts.  

  1. BERA Blogpost ‘Degrees of Difference: Attainment and Awarding Gaps in HE’
  2. Flynn, N., Teemant, A., Viesca, K. & Perumal, R. (2023) Effective Teachers of Multilingual Learners: A Mixed‐Method Study of UK & US Critical Sociocultural Teaching Practices. TESOL Quarterly.
  3. BERA 2022 conference paper:  ‘Insider, Outsider and everywhere in-between: The multiple positionality dilemmas of a ‘race’ researcher in HE (see 1.02 - 1.28)
  4. Viesca, K., Hammer, S., Alisaari, J., Routarinne, S., Teemant, A., Perumal, R. & Flynn, N. (2022) Quality content teaching for multilingual learners: An examination of excellence in instructional practices in 4 nations. Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol. 113
  5. BERA podcast 2021, about the degree-award gap experienced by racially-minoritised students
  6. Perumal, R., Flynn, N., Viesca, K. et al (2020) What is effective pedagogy for multilingual learners? Observations of teaching that challenges inequity from the OPETAN project in England. In: Kirsch, C. & Duarte, J. (eds.) Multilingual approaches for teaching and learning. From acknowledging to capitalizing on multilingualism in European mainstream education. Abingdon: Routledge.

I'm currently writing up my ESRC-funded PhD, which examines factors that contribute to the formation and persistence of the degree-award gap in higher education; I expect to complete the first draft of my thesis in 2024.

External roles

Qualifications

  • MA Education, University of East London

  • Bachelor of Laws (LLB), University of Warwick