Scottish? Don’t bother applying for law at Edinburgh unless you live in a deprived area!

[Shelefttheweb]

The funding of Scottish students tuition fees in Scotland is restricted and has remained the same since 2010 so that limits the number of university places available to Scottish students in Scotland. There are also systems of priority applicants with those living in the 20% most deprived areas (which only counts for about 20% of most deprived families - others live in more mixed areas) or care experienced, refugees etc The highest group get guaranteed entry to courses. This means that on certain courses (eg law at Edinburgh) no one outside a priority group stood a chance of getting a place regardless of how good a candidate they were.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-64247475

We are looking at applying to university soon and I am seriously considering following this mother in this article doing FOI requests to see if there is any point in my son applying for certain courses. No point wasting options on Scottish universities if he was never going to get in.

It’s a well meaning but awful mess isn’t it? It’s also the case in England for lots of the higher ranking universities, turning down non-contextual home students with perfect grades as they just don’t have the places available.

We need to look at increasing UK places and restricting overseas places, the latter have grown significantly as a proportion. That might mean increasing fees and allowing higher and longer loans for non contextual applicants wanting popular courses and universities. Or charging overseas applicants more to enable more places to be made available.

Well this was short sighted of the Scottish Government. Surely they want capable students from all backgrounds to study then live and work in Scotland. If those who aren't getting places have no option but to go elsewhere to study they're unlikely to come back to Scotland once qualified.
It should be free for all Scottish first time applicants, or the policy scrapped altogether. Yet another vote winner that isn't what it seems.

My understanding was that last year was a special case (grade inflation and no LNAT or interviews) so difficult to tell between good students). In the circumstances, gving offers to low SIMD students makes good sense to me.

My DD is in 3rd year at Edinburgh (and works in 1st year halls). She says Scottish students at Edinburgh are mainly privately educated or from good areas/schools. Perhaps addressing the balance for a bit might be good.

Have Edinburgh commented about future policy? I think admission policy should be made clear to all groups so you can manage your and your child's expectation.

But they are not even low SMID individuals - you have to live in the correct areas. If you live in poverty on Shetland/Orkney/Western Isles then that doesn’t count as the community is too mixed. Pretty much anyone living rurally is excluded. On the other hand, large areas of Glasgow (SNP heartland) do count.

Addressing the balance is fine if it gives deprived students (not areas) a boost so long as that boost levels the field rather than excludes another section.

‘Addressing the balance’ good for a bit now your daughter is in?

So DS high school is in a deprived area, our home postcode is not, his friends who live in same town but different postcode are getting Uni offers with lower grades & predicted grades than him. How is this fair, he is gutted as knows he has done better.

How long before parents start renting flats for a year in deprived postcodes? Bit like they do in London to try and get into preferred schools.

@Shelefttheweb
Law in Scotland is mostly Scottish law. Why overseas students want that in any great numbers is a mystery. Unless their home countries don’t care of course. A friend of DD has a law degree from a university in South Africa. We don’t recognise it here.

I assume Scotland has these issues due to no tuition fees for home students but then needing more fully funding students? Plus a political push for higher representation of deprived students? I guess people get what they vote for. Wake up and smell the coffee I think.

The flagging up and levelling up of disadvantaged applicants only works if you have a wider spread of achievements. If you are looking at a ladder with 10 ranks, moving them up one or two would work and reflect that they've had a harder journey to get there.

However, when it's fairly easy to get 5 As, you have loads of kids on the top step and only those you artificially move up can go up. The idea might be correct but the execution is terrible.

They need to make it harder to get As, give credit for other achievements or allow students to present the band of A they got, so those with band 1 or 2 A grades also get recognised.

Very definitely NOT an SNP supporter. Though most of the beneficiary areas for this policy are, strange that 🤔 Unfortunately most SNP supporters seem blinded by the idea independence to any flaws or failings they may have.

They need to make it harder to get As, give credit for other achievements or allow students to present the band of A they got, so those with band 1 or 2 A grades also get recognised.

The band thing seems strange, why hide it? I noticed if you apply to Cambridge they want A1s and I suspect a few others do to.

Thread on this yesterday 😊

www.mumsnet.com/talk/scotsnet/4718290-non-deprived-scottish-students-barred-from-uni-places

@Shelefttheweb
Well those who vote for the policies are getting what they want then. I, like you, think it’s sad the best candidates are excluded. So is an English university worth a go? Does dd need to do law? Mine didn’t and converted. Is that an option? You then get £0 fees and just the conversion course to pay for.

Maybe the international students who go to Scotland to study law don't actually want to go on to practice law. Even if they study law in England now they will have to do the SQE to practise there and can do that after any degree not just a law degree. So it may make no difference other than the Scottish unis have lower entrance grades for them.

They shouldn't be basing it on postcode.

When our DC applied for a top uni place were we living in an good area but 5 in a 2 bed flat. It was so much harder to study in that environment. But dc wasn't classed as deprived (even though were in income poverty) because of the postcode.

We had been planning to move to a much bigger house in a deprived postcode but that fell through. It would have been much easier for dc to study there.

I'll always wonder if they would have got in had we moved.

If this applies across the board to other courses then there is also the worry about recruiting professionals (doctors, lawyers, teachers etc) into the rural and island communities. Areas like the highland struggle to recruit and retain such staff as those from the central belt prefer to stay there. If rural locals are excluded from these courses then who is going to serve these communities?

@SeasonFinale
A law degree doesn’t qualify you to practice law. Never did. You just don’t need to “convert”. Everyone needs to do SQE or BPC.

Yes. There are always law grads who don’t practice law. Thousands of them! However with international students, they might go home to practice. Not all countries require their barristers to do pupillage for example.

@TizerorFizz Thanks for that. I am a solicitor in E/W. What I meant is that internationals may choose to do a Scottish Law Degree because they either don't want to practise or it's good way into a UK uni for them and then they can do the SQE after anyway if they want to practise in the same way a non law graduate would. I am sorry I didn't make my meaning clearer.

Unsure why my last post was all bold. I also appreciate there is no longer conversion as such but the preparation for SQE1 courses are longer (and more expensive) for non law (or other jurisdictional law) than for law grads so in effect there is a different route.

This is an interesting move from EU. Is this a tactic for forcing more money out of the Scottish government? Are they in effect saying, we don’t have the funding to serve Scottish students adequately, so we will triage the poorest first? If SNP support skews lower income, it won’t work because their voters are protected.

EU?

It isn’t even supporting the poorest students first - the majority of poor students do no live the priority zones.

Edinburgh University? Maybe it UE, University of Edinburgh?

Just being lazy and trying to save typing.

@Shelefttheweb in that case it sounds completely self-defeating.

I’m not Scottish…but just amazed. It feels like there is dome sort of triangulating going on…the stated reasons seem so ill thought put. It’s hard to believe this policy is completely sincere.

My inside info on this is very outing so forgive vagueness, but the unis are in a terrible position here. They're being targeted on widening access (rightly) but every single young person who applies for law at Edinburgh is going to have 5As at higher and a clutch of SYS. And Scottish places are heavily restricted by ScotGov.

So how do they do this in a way that's fair? They absolutely can't.

I would advise young people to avoid your Edinburghs and Glasgows. Do law at Strathclyde. And start complaining to the Govt about this! It's a crazy policy. Much, much fairer to give grants to students so they can go where they want rather than trying to cram a whole nation of young people into one pint pot.