A “vast swathe” of Scottish pupils will have their chances of going into higher education “written off” unless widening-access schemes for schools are overhauled, a report has found.
Continuing with the existing approach would be “morally wrong”, according to the hard-hitting findings, seen by TESS. The conclusions are based on research that shows tens of thousands of pupils are at risk of missing out on university or college each year because their school receives no expert support on widening access.
The University of Glasgow report (bit.ly/AccessReport) also predicts the government is doomed to fail on its ambitious target to significantly increase the number of school-leavers from poor backgrounds entering HE.
The researchers warned that widening-access schemes focused on schools with a record of sending low numbers of pupils to university. But many pupils from deprived backgrounds attended “higher-progression schools” - where, on the whole, more leavers went on to HE - and therefore missed out on such support.
Analysis of data from 109 schools in the West of Scotland shows that, each year, an average of nearly 40,000 pupils from the 40 per cent most-deprived postcodes are not targeted by access schemes from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), which funded the research. “These pupils are effectively disenfranchised from aspiration to, and support for, HE progression,” the report finds.
The researchers noted that many such pupils decided they would like to apply for HE late in their school careers, but the lack of expert guidance at an earlier stage led to “uninformed” subject choices in S3-4, and a failure to amass the required qualifications and grades.
‘Mistaken’ assumptions
The idea that pupils from poor areas would do well and progress to HE, simply because their school had a track record of sending many leavers on to HE, was “mistaken”, the researchers found. This was because their home life “overrides” any supposed advantage of attending a particular school.
If anything, these pupils were at an even greater disadvantage than neighbours from similarly deprived areas who went on to other schools, because they did not benefit from widening-access schemes, they concluded.
Scottish policymakers now often focus on early intervention programmes to encourage young children from deprived backgrounds to think about university, as attitudes can harden as early as S1 (see graphic, above right).
The report identifies the transition from primary to secondary as a crucial time, but also states that it would be “morally wrong” if older pupils in higher-progression schools did not receive more help. “To not engage with these pupils now would be to accept that they are not going to progress to HE and effectively write off the chances of a vast swathe of Scottish youth for years to come,” it adds.
The national target for one in five HE entrants to come from the 20 per cent most-deprived postcodes by 2030 - up from about one in seven - will be “very difficult” to achieve without bringing schemes into higher-progression schools, the report warns.
Glasgow education director Maureen McKenna said that, in the decade to 2015, the city’s schools improved from 18.2 per cent of leavers going into HE to 33.9 per cent. But the authority had to pay for widening-access work for some schools, because outside funding excluded high-progression schools and gave them no incentive for helping more pupils to enter HE.
“We have been discussing for a few years the importance of targeting individual young people, and this report now provides the evidence to support a change in the way programmes are funded,” Ms McKenna said.
The way forward
An SFC spokesman said the body had commissioned the report with the intention of exploring how to support pupils from high-progression schools. He praised the “excellent recommendations”, which would be used to revise approaches for helping pupils into HE.
A government spokesman said the findings were consistent with last year’s final report from the Commission on Widening Access, while recent figures showed the highest-ever entry rate to universities for 18-year-olds from the 20 per cent most-deprived areas. The £750 million Scottish Attainment Challenge would also help children affected by poverty to reach their potential, he added.
Euan Duncan, president of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association and a guidance teacher, said that widening-access programmes could “impact life opportunities quite dramatically”, especially for pupils whose families had no experience of HE.
Schools had realised the importance of engaging parents, he added, but it was a huge logistical challenge for teachers to set up meetings with 150 families, so help from experts on widening access was crucial.
