To me, it is obvious that an individual from the most deprived circumstances who has the potential to benefit from higher education should have the same opportunity to fulfil that as others with similar potential from wealthier backgrounds.

So, clearly, I welcome the Scottish government’s commitment to widening access. However, we need to recognise that turning commitment into reality will pose difficult questions and lead to significant challenges.

First, what needs to change? The focus is on what the post-school education sector - mainly universities - needs to do to admit more people from deprived parts of society on to higher education courses. However, universities select the required number of students on a competitive basis using qualifications; that is a reasonable way to behave.

That this leads to entry being unbalanced in terms of “social class” is not actually their fault but the result of an unequal society. However, to redress this imbalance by asking for lower levels of qualifications than what is expected from other students runs the risk of introducing a new form of unfairness.

The real problem is that we do not have a school system that develops the potential of each individual to the point where they have an equal chance of university admission, irrespective of socio-economic background, even though all young people are provided with a minimum of 11 years of compulsory schooling, and are taught by graduates in what are generally well-resourced institutions.

The reality is that private schools, accessible for the most part only to the children of the privileged, perpetuate that privilege into the next generation. Meanwhile, the state school system has so far failed to find a recipe that consistently provides the same preparation for university for less affluent pupils with academic potential that private schools provide for affluent pupils.

Tinkering with selection

Asking universities to tinker with their selection processes may serve as a stopgap system of pump-priming, but the long-term solution is to rebuild the secondary school system so that all young people are developed to their full potential - including “academically” where appropriate.

But we also need to be clear exactly what we are trying to widen access to. Is it “higher education”, “higher education institutions” or “universities” - three related, but not synonymous, terms? Is higher education in colleges as acceptable an outcome as a university degree? If not, is this because it is less economically useful than a degree? Or is it simply that going to college cannot compete with the social cachet of going to university?

If the intended emphasis is really just on wider access to universities, will there be an increase in overall places at university and, if so, how is that increase to be paid for?

If there is not to be an overall increase, some people will be “displaced” to make room. If those displaced are the most privileged, how will their privileged (and therefore influential and vocal) parents respond to that? If it transpires that the slightly less deprived will be squeezed out by the more deprived, will that be fair - and will it be politically acceptable?

If the higher education provided by colleges is also included in the aspiration, will that mean an increase in HNC/HND places - and if so how will that be paid for in an environment where the funding of colleges has been reduced year after year in real terms for most of the past decade?

Would encouraging both a greater uptake of HNCs/HNDs and a lesser uptake of degrees be desirable if it allowed an increase in the total numbers benefiting from post-SCQF 6 (Higher or equivalent) learning, since an HNC/HND is far cheaper for the public purse than an honours degree? And is that in line with what the economy needs?

Identifying deprivation

The most fundamental issue, however, is how we identify those who are “deprived”. The use of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) “datazones” is highly unsatisfactory. SIMD ranks datazones by aggregating information about the proportion of people in each area who exhibit certain traits associated with deprivation.

But these datazones are in fact postcode areas, designed for delivering letters. Most postcode areas do not have a homogenous population. There are many deprived people who live in areas that are not deprived - especially in rural areas where poverty is dispersed rather than concentrated, as it tends to be in urban environments.

Equally, there are affluent people who happen to live in an area where many of their neighbours are deprived - and who might therefore benefit from whatever special considerations apply, even though they themselves do not meet any of the criteria for being deprived.

The phrase “postcode lottery” is hackneyed, true; in this case, however, its use would be extremely well justified.

So, let us celebrate the fact that the government wants to widen access to higher education to reduce social and educational inequality. Let us give the new commissioner on widening access our full support.

But let us hope that, in trying to address this challenge, there are no unforeseen consequences that we will later come to regret.

Rob Wallen is chair of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) Partnership Board and principal of North East Scotland College