I’VE reached that stage in life where I sometimes catch myself talking to younger people about how things used to be in “my day”. The latest incidence occurred while talking to a friend’s teenage son, just home for the Christmas holidays after his first term at university. We were looking at old pictures of us as students and the thing he couldn’t get his head around wasn’t that his mother and me once used to be young and cool – though he did find that bizarre - but that we were being paid to study. Both of us came from working class families and received full grants of £2,200 per year, enough to pay for accommodation, food and some pretty good nights out at the union, if memory serves me right.
How did the state afford this, he asked with that tone of incredulous conservatism you often hear from young people these days, who we must remember grew up during the banking crisis of 2008 and the austerity that followed. The past is indeed a foreign country, I said. But then I remembered there was more pragmatic reason why we could still afford grants back in the early 1990s: far fewer people went into higher education at all, around 25 per cent of the population. Today that figure is nearer 50 per cent.
I thought of this conversation at the weekend while reading comments made by the Scottish Government’s new fair access to education commissioner, Professor Peter Scott, that will potentially rattle some cages in our more affluent suburbs. Middle class pupils with good exam grades have no “entitlement” to go to university, said Prof Scott, a renowned educationalist. He added that university should not be seen as a “reward” for doing well at school and urged higher education institutions to look at the backgrounds of applicants as well as their academic achievements.
This, of course, is what those concerned with widening access have been hammering home for some time, that the current system is grossly unfair because it works in favour of the middle classes at the expense of bright candidates from poorer areas. But hearing Prof Scott go further by implying that middle class youngsters may well have to lose out in order to meet equality targets is definitely a departure.
It’s a shame that anyone has to “lose out”, of course, but since middle class children are likely have a parent-made safety net of other options, advice, networks and financial assistance, perhaps it’s better that they look at different options rather than the poorer youngsters who are more likely to fall through that net altogether, never to find their way back.
Scotland has always wanted to view itself as more egalitarian than its neighbours, and that’s one of the reasons all this hurts so much. The fact is we are also losing out on a wealth of talent we must tap into if Scotland is to thrive economically. Report after report lays out that while pupils from our poorest neighbourhoods are falling further and more quickly behind their wealthier peers from a very young age, those from the best schools are doing ever better at exams. And it’s now harder for poorer kids than ever - a higher proportion of young people from working class backgrounds like mine went to university in the 1980s and 1990s, supported by the grant system mentioned above.
Helping disadvantaged children make progress is in itself mindbogglingly difficult, and that’s without even considering how this might impact upon– quite possibly unfairly - middle class youngsters who still have to work darn hard to achieve their grades. It’s a headache inducing problem, but one that, to her credit, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has asked voters to judge her on. That said, Ms Sturgeon is unlikely to be in charge when the Scottish Government’s ambitious target on this - that by 2030, students from the 20 per cent most deprived communities should represent 20 per cent of entrants to Scottish universities – is called to account.
With this in mind, perhaps progress could be made more quickly if we stick to the same 20 per cent targets but go back to the early 1990s approach - admit fewer students to a smaller number of high quality courses but, crucially, support them them with grants. This approach might actually be fairer on every applicant, and encourage young people and their parents to think rigorously about whether university really is the right path for them. At the same time we could expand the vocational education sector along German lines, where it is a high quality, prestige option, to include the tech and engineering industries we are increasingly reliant upon.
These are changing times politically, economically, constitutionally. We need better solutions to offer our young people regardless of their background. I hope Professor Scott will be given the time and the space to come up with them.
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