ONCE again we have headlines on a recurring theme much used to criticise teachers, schools, curriculum and especially the Scottish Government regarding the low level of disadvantaged entrant numbers to our oldest universities (“Ancient universities recruit fewest deprived students”, The Herald, March 31). I am convinced that this ignores a fundamental factor which no amount of tinkering with the above will alter.
I am one of a family of seven over three generations involved in education at all levels: primary, secondary, further and higher education. Not one of us ever found that the reason for this “shortfall” was anything other than the effects of hardship on family needs or aspirations. Nothing has changed as the impact of poverty has not changed and family necessity still determines aspiration.
Most of us have lost count of the number of times a pupil from such a background, well qualified and able to apply, adamantly refused to consider university. We have heard all the justifications: “Mam needs the money”; “Dad is getting me taken on by the builder/plumber he works for”; “My auntie is getting me a job in the shop/office where she works”; and “nobody in my family goes to university”. Even the benefit of no tuition fees cannot outweigh the necessity of earning money as soon as possible.
There are other factors feeding into this situation, such as the only print material in some households being Dad’s betting slip and parental interest being absent. It is generally the case that the parents we most want to reach to encourage their offspring are those who never come.
On the education side, standards were diminished in 1965 by the memorandum that forbade the teaching of tables, grammar, syntax and spelling, wanted teaching led by pupil interest and denied the possibility of transfer of training. There are primary teachers only now retiring who had themselves no such formal training.
I was horrified, on a visit to the ancient university which three of my family attended, to find that the work I had done in first year could not now start till second year, to accommodate those entering with lesser qualifications. This is a lowering of standards occasioned by external pressures.
Should it not be recognised that university is meant to be an academic education, intended to produce our thinkers and researchers, of whom we need a limited number, and therefore there is greater value for the majority in other areas of further education? It is not for everyone, as the rising drop-out rate proves.
The reasons for the low numbers lie a long way back and are deeply embedded. They will take time to change. Instead of looking to education for a solution we should be working on the barriers caused by poverty and disadvantage in potential students’ daily lives.
P Davidson,
Gartcows Road,
Falkirk.
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