Non-deprived Scottish students barred from uni places

[Sorefootouch]

The only Scottish students taken by Edinburgh university last year to study law came from deprived neighbourhoods, regardless of grades. Is this a good thing? If my child wants to go to University of Edinburgh and study law do we have to move to a deprived neighbourhood before applying? Is this fair? My child goes to an average Scottish state school and is predicted to get all A’s at higher.

www.scotsman.com/news/politics/students-from-less-deprived-background-have-door-closed-to-university-due-to-snp-funding-approach-3983059

It is very disappointing to realise that despite paying higher taxes our kids have no chance of getting in to some courses, not because they aren't intelligent enough but because we have worked hard. Widening access should not come at the expense of everyone else.

Now that this system has been made public I would not be surprised if some parents don't consider renting a property in a deprived postcode and using that as a postal address, in the same way that we hear about parents renting properties in England to gain access to preferred schools.

Surely the children need to attend the school in the deprived area though? Or is it just about the postcode where they live? I read that children who go to private school and then come out for 6th year can’t pretend they went to state school as the university look at where you went to school previously

Sorry to hear this OP. What a mess. ☹️ I hope your son is able to find a place somewhere suitable.

I wouldn’t really mind so much if they were up front about it. ‘Sorry we have limited funds and we are directing them all to those who are very deprived. You have little chance of getting in so I suggest you apply to English universities’. But they don’t.

They allow kids that live in areas other than the 20% most deprived to have a hope and dream that if they worked hard enough they could get to the prestigious course, when the odds are secretly stacked against them to make it all but impossible. If they were upfront about the number of places available for kids from non deprived areas kids could make an informed choice and parents could advise those kids accordingly, to avoid them striving for the unattainable.

And the SNP get to claim that it’s ok to charge higher taxes cause we get free tuition fees in exchange.

It’s primarily post code, hence 168 out of 170 accepted getting in being in a postcode in quintile 1. School is a secondary factor. I know of at least one person who’s grand house has a postcode that quite innocently encompasses a really deprived area, and they are granted widening access places.

It is a while since I looked at it, but living in certain post codes did seem to give you an advantage. Our local high school has a mixed catchment area so you could choose to rent in a deprived area that was still within the local catchment area.

I agree that it is the lack of transparency that is part of the problem. You can only apply for a limited number of courses and if you knew from the outset that you had no chance of getting in to a particular course then you would choose to apply for something else. Instead, the standard entry grades that Edinburgh listed last year for law were AAABB, which gave a lot of people false hope. There was nothing to indicate that you would not get in if you were Scottish and did not live in a deprived area.

There is another aspect of this which is also unfair. If you live in an area near a university then you may find that the university has a partnership with your school and applicants from that school are favoured. If, however, you live in a part of Scotland which does not have any links with a university then you cannot take advantage of such schemes.

Plenty of us pay taxes and don't use or access the services that they pay for. For example, I don't need free personal care, I'm still pleased my taxes are paying for those who do. I haven't had a prescription for over 10years, I'm still glad they're free for the people who do need them. My children didn't get 30hours free nursery but I'm happy for the families that can access that now. The list goes on....

But surely if you need free personal care, prescription, nursery etc you can access it regardless of your postcode, the same as anyone else in Scotland?
The argument the OP is using is that Law at Edinburgh was not available to any citizen of Scotland, it was postcode dependent

Sorry I should say any citizen of Scotland who had the entry grades

It is.
The drop out rate will rise as the deliberate selection of students with poorer grades bites. They may have to.moderate courses to
make them more accessible.
And Scotland's brightest and.best? They may move to England or even go abroad to pursue their studies.
Oh, well, it,s another vote loses for Sturgeon.

It’s the Scottish cap as a whole rather than just the widening access that gets me.

In theory you can end up Student 1 with straight As, student 2 with AAABB (or equivalent) but student 2 gets in over student 1 because student 1 is Scottish and so the funding cap applies whereas student 2 comes with more funding. There is no way for student 1 even to level the playing field by paying the same tuition as student 2.

It seems to be if you have the SIMD 1 quintile you get the Edinburgh plus flag regardless of what school you attend. I put in our SIMD 1 quintile postcode and the name of a private school and it told me I would qualify for a plus flag.

But they will be paying off student debt for 40 years. Indeed if they go to England to study law they will need to practise in England or Wales anyway

Exactly. A permanent loss of educated Scottish young people to the nation. If they want to go to university and their 5 As don’t get them into a degree course that they want, they’d be considering their options. State sponsored brain drain. But that is preferable to the SNP than either funding universities to increase the student cap (and presumably having to make budget cuts elsewhere to pay for it) or backtracking on their ‘free tuition’ promise. Just shows a government who has no concept of how essential an educated workforce is for a successful economy.

Er, that's the nature of most university places. You might study hard and be very clever, but for all kinds of reasons the university chooses another student for the place. Nobody is guaranteed the exact place that they want.

That has always been the case yes, but there are two main differences:

1. it has always been in the control of the prospective student previously. You have the grades, and you can work your arse off for the best grades possible. Then there’s the personal statement. You can do voluntary work in a relevant sector, you can do your duke of Edinburgh, lots of betterment activities etc. but here the vast majority of student applications were automatically disregarded purely based on the students address. Nothing the student can do about that. All the efforts have been wasted.
2. we are paying massively inflated taxes for benefits which the government has promised are available to us, and then have told us we cannot access.

I live in the heart of a student community. I overlook the stepping over piles of vomit in the street, the way every community space is bought up for student housing, the rowdiness in the stairwell at night, because I see how important the university is to the local - and international - economy, and I like living in a vibrant, multicultural community. but all that is turned on it head immediately when that same university tells the members of the public living in their community that they are excluded from gaining a place due to their postcode. You can live amongst our students but you cannot be one. It stinks.

Your whole premise is ignorant and elitist. Your anecdotal personal experience aside, it is simply false to claim that students from low-income families can simply “study harder” and be able to compete with a child who was raised in privilege from birth. There are countless systemic ways in which the
I’m not talking about your uncle’s mate’s best friend’s sister who lives in a deprived postcode but is actually a millionaire — obviously any approach is going to be by nature a somewhat blunt instrument but for the vast majority of people postcodes do correlate with access to opportunities.

But what’s even more arrogant, not to mention ignorant, is that you think this is a “brain drain” for Scotland. No doubt your child is indeed a unique and special genius but believe it or not low income children can also be unique and special geniuses! For zillions of systemic and individual reasons their grades may be lower but that certainly doesn’t mean they are not as smart as your child. Do you honestly think that grades are a true representation of the abilities of a child who has had a chaotic home life, eating crappy cheap food, living in overcrowded substandard housing (or worse), had little guidance from parents, attended a failing school with mediocre teachers, and juggled two jobs while caring for younger siblings? Do you really say with a straight face that that child simply needs to work harder?? How spectacularly arrogant and clueless you are! The fact is, a child in the circumstances I mentioned who ends up with AAABB is probably a lot smarter and more of an asset to Scotland than the AAAAA kid who went to great schools, had consistent encouragement at home, plenty of time and space to revise, private tutoring, nutritious meals and all of his needs met. Success in the law requires more than just good grades, you need the ability to persevere, multi-task, and do your best even when things are difficult. So yeah, I think Scotland will survive.

(Then again you have still only identified one course at one uni where this is a true issue. Without hard facts and numbers I’m not convinced that this is as widespread as you claim.)

Tell you what, if I ever needed a lawyer I'd prefer it was someone who could relate to my life and circumstances i.e. a privileged, entitled, child of middle-class parents who brag incessantly about how much tax they pay would just not resonate with me or my experience at all.

Of course, you could save that £8k a year on taxes by moving to England/Wales - start the middle-class brain drain - and use it towards an English uni (obviously without the cachet of Edinburgh) but at least you'll be able to boast about the uni fees you're paying.

Previous poster got it right, this smacks of a 'Won't someone think of the middle class kids!' whilst for decades the parents of the middle-class kids gave not one single flying fuck about the (often) much, much brighter kids who didn't do DoE awards or play the violin to make them more appealling to selection boards.

It's the turn of the bright kids from less affluent areas now.

Suck it up.

I wish people would stop referring to everyone who doesn't live in SIMD1 as middle class

The system of selection used by Edinburgh last year is not widening access. It is restricting access to a particular group of people from the very lowest decile. While it would be good for the legal profession to reflect all social groups in society this will not be achieved by only allowing people from the lowest decile to access Uni. If you want the profession to reflect society then there should be a wider intake from all levels of society. I don't think anyone is arguing that there shouldn't be wider access, just that it shouldn't be to the exclusion of everyone else.

And it isn't just the middle class kids that would be excluded under the system used by Edinburgh Uni last year. It will be kids from working class backgrounds too when they aren't from the very lowest decile areas. Only two people who weren't from the very lowest decile area got in to Edinburgh Uni last year.

a child who has had a chaotic home life, eating crappy cheap food, living in overcrowded substandard housing (or worse), had little guidance from parents, attended a failing school with mediocre teachers, and juggled two jobs while caring for younger siblings?

I’m sure they’re beating down the door for that Edinburgh University Law place. Get real

Tell you what, if I ever needed a lawyer I'd prefer it was someone who could relate to my life and circumstances i.e. a privileged, entitled, child of middle-class parents who brag incessantly about how much tax they pay would just not resonate with me or my experience at all

Really? I’d rather have the most competent.

Oxbridge in England is doing similar. Overseas places (very high fees) have increased massively, access has widened, privilege middle class kids get less places (especially those from private schools and they have hinted grammars might be treated like private schools in the future). The super rich private school kids are heading to the US. I suppose the middle class kids might be heading to Edinburgh…I am in London and my friends are increasingly sending their kids to eg Ireland now and some back to Europe where they have a connection.

Isn't Law a special case as Scottish and English law are different.
If you force children abroad to study they won't be back.

Well at least Scottish kids are assessed on merit when applying to Oxbridge as opposed to postcode - something they cannot control. A working class non-deprived kid has more chance of getting into Oxbridge (minimal chance) than Edinburgh (no chance) under this policy.

The aim ought to be the most able after stripping away educational advantages etc had by some not others. To find the basic educational ability. This policy would seem to indicate that ALL of Scotland’s most able pupils are from deprived areas, which seems statistically unlikely.

And yes, kids forced to go to English universities to be judged on merit won’t be back, regardless of what they study.

People from poverty working hard to get 5 As does indeed happen. My MP Ian Murray did just that from Wester Hailes and got to Edinburgh universty to read law. But no, I appreciate if a teen is living in a B&B even the widening access grades are unobtainable. This needs to be looked at and addressed in a more sophisticated manner.

I am from a poor but not SIMD 1 deprived community. I got to a good university on a full grant due to my parents level of income. Kids like me (and the private school kids, and the middle class kids) are being excluded. This is not a good thing. You don’t widen access by taking opportunities from other kids, you widen access by widening the number of places available.