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.

Presuming you mean Edinburgh Uni by EU, I wouldn't be surprised. They've been complaining about this for years and the last couple of years of Covid grade-inflation has pushed them to the limit. They have to do something.

@MilkshakesBringAllTheCoosToTheYard if the issue is oversupply of applicants with top grades, why don't they introduce aptitude tests and interviews like in medicine courses? Seems fairer than what is being described as a random postcode lottery.

@opoponax My assumption is that, given the volume of applicants and numbers of courses now, there aren't enough admissions personnel to manage interviews, aptitude tests etc.

I interviewed for all 5 of my choices in 1990 - my brother in 1995 didn't interview at a single one.

But lots of SNP supporters live in those zones

It’s forward thinking of the SNP to ensure that all those that run the courts in Scotland are SNP supporters for all the potential court cases coming up.

A lottery was suggested on the other thread. That doesn’t seem such a terrible idea. You could still allow slightly lower entry grades for poorer student (not postcodes) and do any other selecting to narrow the field. But then enter all good candidates into a lottery. Interviews are often not much better than lotteries anyway. The alternative would be stretch the grade range of exams (not in the University’s gift) so fewer candidates get top grades - a bit like the way A* was introduced in England (though I prefer the switch to numbers as it doesn’t downgrade those whose A was the top grade).

Quite possible

Personally, I'd say the issue is under supply of places rather than over-supply of candidates. Yes, tests would give a way of selecting, but you'd still have vast numbers of Scottish students not getting places because they're capped.

Full grants for every Scottish student - and no cap on Scottish numbers - would put them on a level playing field with UK and international students.

@SeasonFinale
According to the latest Bar Council careers leaflet, barristers still do a GDL. And they are still available.

There is also pressure from within the Scottish legal profession to widen access.

A close family member has been working on it.

Close family member is a Scottish lawyer and says they stand out because they went to state school (albeit one in an affluent area of Edinburgh).

I accompanied them recently to a legal event (not a lawyer myself) and it was full of white middle class people.

Then do they condemn Edinburgh for doing the opposite?

"I accompanied them recently to a legal event (not a lawyer myself) and it was full of white middle class people."

It was inSxotpans you say? So surely you would expect the group to group to be predominantly white people? It would have bizarre if it had been otherwise, surely?

Need to wear my glasses. "In Scotland"

Just wondering how you identify a working class lawyer. Do they wear jeans and hi vis vests instead of suits?

@Shelefttheweb
I guess they all had Edinburgh accents and not obviously Glaswegian!

In our universities, we have around 18,000 places for law grads. The idea that more are needed is ludicrous. What is needed is the best students being able to access the best courses. Of course the majority of the law grads don’t work in law. Around 400 pupilages ar the Bar each year for example and they are open to older grads too. So I don’t think more places is the issue, even for Scotland, it’s confidence that the best students get the places. Obviously English students should swerve these courses.

If no one who did not live in those areas got to read law at Edinburgh that is a travesty. It reminds me of China during its "cultural revolution" when the chidlren of doctors and the elite were forced to move to the countryside to be street sweepers and rubbishmen to try to breach the cycle of middle class stay middle class which led to a lot of breaches of human rights.

We could probably live with about 10% of the places being reserved for those who are deprived or nominally so based on some metric but for 100% to go to them skews things so unfairly it could perhaps be subject to a judicial review. Also if student X has no chance of a place then tell them otherwise they are wasting an application elsewhere. Law is very specific because English and Scottish law even are very different so unlike a lot of degrees which laws you study is crucial. (I am a lawyer in England as are 4 of my children (or at least the youngest two are just trainee solicitors but should qualify in 2024 so all this is quite close to home).

Some people change their accent over time accidentally or deliberately so it can be quite hard to tell. I am middle class from Newcastle and work as a lawyer in London, but there will be quite a lot of women my age who were working class, move to London for work and over time their accent changed. So I am not sure the bar event in Scotland which looked all middle class necessarily proves where those people started. The fact they are white shows equality at work however as even in Northumberland near where I am from it is 2% non white only so something would be very wrong if lawyers were 50% BAME or something like that up there and Scotland will not be too different., In fact in law in general in England there is an over representation of BAME people than in the general population because they work very hard and think law is a good profession so push children into it whereas the white working class of England are the most disadvantaged group.

I agree @TizerorFizz that we don't need more places, the issue is how they are allocated.

Say 2000 of those law grads are in Scotland (which feels generous?). Due to the way they're funded, Scottish young people can only access a % of those places. The total number of places is set by the unis and fairly difficult to get hold of on a course by course basis, but say it's 30%. That means there are 600 places for Scottish children on Scottish courses.

With the widening access plans, 20% of those courses are reserved for poorer children so that means 480 places in total. Now, I'm actually OK with the widening access agenda, but in practice that means an awful lot of young people who have done everything right simply can't access those places and there's no way of fairly assessing them as they all will have 5 As at higher... And if it wasn't for the funding cap, they would have access to all 2000 places. It is unfair.

You're being a tiny bit disingenuous here. I'm from a state school just outside Edinburgh and I know a Watsonian when I spot them in the wild.

Snork at co cern about a lack of BAME attendees at a Gaelic event

The addition problem for law is that it varies from country to country. Not all overseas degrees will qualify in England, for example. So then there is a need for additional education.

@MilkshakesBringAllTheCoosToTheYard
Looking at the Complete University Guide, only two Scottish universities are top 20 for Law. (Glasgow and Edinburgh) St Andrews not listed at all. Top 30 include Stirling, Strathclyde, and Aberdeen. There are 5 other universities ranked for law but 3 of these are ranked 98, 99 and 104 so of dubious use to highly qualified students maybe?

I haven’t looked at intake numbers at the top 5 but it’s clearly an issue for Scotland if the pool of the brightest and best is artificially reduced.

St Andrews don’t offer law.