Why do some parents send their children to secondary schools outside the catchment area? In the second part of his series on education and inequality in Scotland, Andrew Conway finds associations between school placements and relative wealth, house prices and population density.
How to assess educational inequality? This is the first in a series of posts by Andrew Conway looking at placing requests and what, if anything, they can tell us about how educational inequality varies across Scotland.
‘Most access initiatives target the people identified as disadvantaged. We remain less comfortable curtailing the effects of privilege.’
“The Scottish system is not debt-free in the absence of fees: indeed Scottish students are borrowing a substantial amount as a group each year. The Scottish approach relies heavily on loans to cover the state’s role in providing low-income students, in particular, with living cost support. Grants are now so low that those from the lowest incomes are taking on the most of that living cost debt.”
“there is no realistic chance that the Scottish Government is going to reduce its reliance on student loans to underwrite the higher education system. £500m is roughly the annual cost of the whole FE system, or 1p on the basic rate of income tax” Scotland’s leading expert on another model – and more – of funding HE.
Professor Emer Smyth,from the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, on the widespread, but little studied, issue of the underperformance of boys at all stages of education from pre-school to first degree. What are the causes and what can be done?
“Scots are only slightly more egalitarian than people in England, while support for redistribution has declined across the UK. People will pay for specific services, notably health, but are not keen on redistribution. They want more powers for Scotland but are less keen on different policies or taxes.”
“The Scottish Government recently declared itself a “global leading light in the campaign for more open and accessible government”. Going backwards in terms of openness and accessibility in relation to special advisers suggests that there’s still a bit of work to do making good that commitment.”
“There are teachers in the playground but bullying usually gets taken to the classroom teacher and they don’t always deal with it. Teachers think their job is to educate children but they should realise it is also to support children and to help them when they are finding things difficult.”
“The government should, of course, be consulting with experts and gathering evidence, but it is difficult to shake off the feeling that this particular group has been constructed with an eye on PR rather than policy, as a means of generating put-downs for FMQs rather than a serious desire to invite scrutiny.” Advisers – or cheer-leaders?