Bottom of class

Figures published by The Students Award Agency for Scotland show that since 2007, when the SNP came to power, the sum of bursaries and grants given to students has fallen by 33.1 per cent.

Such damning evidence proves once and for all that the SNP’S much- lauded “free” tuition fees policy is delivered by substantially reducing the money paid to our aspirational young people from the poorest families.

This year t he Educational Maintenance Allowance was reduced by £ 10 million in yet another example of the SNP government’s cynical and cruel treatment of young people who want to remain in school after 16. The SNP government has decimated the Further Education sector where many young people from our poorest families star t their jour - ne yin to Higher Education and, as we now know that students from Scotland have less opportunity of studying medicine in our universities, what chance do they have of reaching their potential?

Education secretary John Swinney’s answer to his party’s appalling record in “closing the gap” in Education is to burden schools with more bureaucracy and ignore the