Meeting of the Parliament 06 March 2018
As I mentioned in my statement, I recognise that some people have concerns about displacement. I point Liz Smith to the fact that the commissioner for fair access has said that
“the available data is suggestive rather than conclusive”.
there is a fear of displacement, but displacement has not been proved in the statistics that we have. As I mentioned in my statement, there has been a 13 per cent increase in the number of students from the most deprived communities being accepted to university. At the same time, there has been an overall increase in the total number of Scottish students at university. That is something that we both can welcome.
I mentioned that there is no short cut for EU students—or for anyone else for that matter. I do not want us to get into a frame of mind in which we think that we will somehow widen access by hoping that enough places will become available and that Brexit—which we, certainly we in the SNP, do not want—will lead to changes in demand. I do not want universities to sit by and to hope and assume that they will get enough widening-access students because something else—the scale and extent of which we do not know—will happen.
There needs to be systemic change to encourage people from deprived communities to apply. I listened to Sir Peter Scott’s evidence to the committee and his discussions about success. As I said in my statement, I want to ensure that we achieve successful outcomes for the people who fill the widening-access places. By “successful outcomes”, I mean their making it to graduation day and securing good graduate jobs.
I appreciate that Sir Peter Scott discussed with the committee changes to how a student can get from one year to another, and whether the system needs to be more flexible. That is for universities to look into. When looking at what success is, we must acknowledge that success is the person achieving a good degree at the end of their time at university. That is why we are talking not just about people getting into university but about what happens after graduation day.
I have committed to working with Universities Scotland to ensure that it has information on what happens in individual schools and on academic achievement. However, I will say—the commissioner also made the point—that universities do not need that information in order to set minimum entry requirements, which are based on what students need to get through and to succeed in their degrees. That information might prove to be useful to universities in other avenues, but they do not need it. Universities need to get on with the job of moving on with contextualised admissions and minimum entry requirements. We cannot afford to wait another year for another round of data, and to see another round of students not having access to the university places to which they should have access.