Poorer Scots still being failed over higher education
English are twice as likely to attend university
POORER Scots are less likely to achieve the university dream than those in England, in a damning indictment of the SNP’s eight years in power.
As Nicola Sturgeon gave a major speech boasting of her government’s success and promising to ‘close the attainment gap completely’, new figures show the challenge facing her is huge.
The First Minister, who will announce her programme for government when the Scottish parliament reconvenes in a fortnight, said she wanted Scottish education to be the best in the world.
And she insisted that should be true for children from the poorest backgrounds, as well as those from more affluent areas.
But the rate of youngsters attending university from poorer parts of England is now twice as high as north of the Border. It is also better in Wales and Northern Ireland.
The figures lay bare the lie that the SNP’s free tuition pledge helps poorer Scots
‘An era of denial and bluster’
attend university, rather than being a sop to the middle classes. Although English universities charge fees of up to £9,000 a year, they also offer financial support to students from deprived backgrounds.
Just 9.7 per cent of Scots from disadvantaged areas have been accepted by universities this summer, according to UCAS, compared to 17 per cent in England, 13.9 per cent in Northern Ireland and 15.5 per cent in Wales.
The SNP’s record on education has suffered a series of blows in recent weeks:
Literacy has plummeted, with just 45 per cent of 13 and 14-year-olds achieving acceptable standards.
Teachers demanding a 5 per cent pay rise are threatening their first strike in 30 years.
The SNP has repeatedly missed its own class size target, and threatened to strip councils of funding unless they maintained teacher numbers.
Despite this dismal record, Miss Sturgeon insisted education would be at the heart of her programme for government, which will be unveiled in two weeks. Speaking at Wester Hailes Education Centre in Edinburgh yesterday, the First Minister said: ‘I want to be able to say, with confidence, that there is no better place in the world to be educated than here in Scotland – and I want to know that this claim holds true for all young people, regardless of their background or circumstance.’
Miss Sturgeon’s speech was titled ‘A World Leader in Education’ and she boasted that ‘Scottish schools are a success story’. But Keir Bloomer, the independent consultant who chaired the Commission on School Reform, warned: ‘Self- congratulation is seldom the prelude to improvement.’
Mr Bloomer, a former director of education in Clackmannanshire who is relaunching the commission under the auspices of the Reform Scotland thinktank, added: ‘Now that the era of denial and bluster seems to be over, we need to redouble our efforts to improve.’
While the 9.7 per cent rate of Scottish students from the poorest backgrounds attending university is an improvement on the 2011 figure of 7.3 per cent, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson warned: ‘The issue is much worse in Scotland than in any other part of the UK. This lands squarely at the SNP’s door, as this Scottish Government has presided over falling school standards, a growing attainment gap and enormous cuts to college courses which can be another route to university.’
Iain Gray, Scots Labour education spokesman, added: ‘Scotland’s greatest natural resource is our young people, but for eight years the SNP Government has not invested in them as they deserve.’
UCAS said its figures did not i nclude all Scots students enrolling on higher education courses in colleges. A Scottish Government spokesman said the Scottish figures were ‘ not suitable for UK comparisons’.
IT was, at first glance, an inspirational speech designed to reassure parents across Scotland that state education is in safe hands.
Nicola Sturgeon said her laudable aim was to ‘ ensure that Scotland’s proud educational traditions are renewed and refreshed for the modern age’.
But this was not a speech made on day one of a fledgling administration: it was delivered by a First Minister eight years after her party won power – most of them wasted on its highly divisive constitutional obsession.
In the meantime, children are still languishing in some of the developed world’s most overcrowded classrooms, with far too many struggling to read and write to acceptable standards.
Acute staffing shortages, a disaster-prone curriculum and an exam system that has allowed candidates to gain a Higher Maths qualification with a 33.8 per cent pass mark add to the growing sense of crisis at the chalkface.
And, as we report today, poorer Scots are less likely to go to university than their counterparts in England, despite the SNP’s flagship commitment to ‘free’ higher education.
Introducing a note of farce to proceedings yesterday was Education Secretary Angela Constance, who blundered by sending out a semi-literate tweet and said in a recent BBC radio interview: ‘This is work that has went on for over a decade.’
Given that she is the minister in charge of tackling the literacy crisis in our schools, could there be a starker illustration of the challenge now facing the SNP?