Meeting of the Parliament 04 December 2025
Two very important universities have been part of my life. The first is what I called Paisley tech when I was there in the 1980s, which is now the University of the West of Scotland, and the second is the University of St Andrews. Both have achieved remarkable progress on widening access. The University of the West of Scotland, which Mr Adam knows very well, has a fantastic foundation academy that reaches out to 34 schools through a range of councils—I think that it is 10 councils in total. It has enrolled 3,500 pupils at no cost to the schools and councils that are involved. It provides an introduction to university for those young people through a 10-week module, which is delivered in the school, not the university, and is run by lecturers and staff from the institution. On completion of the academy, a participant can get Scottish credit and qualifications framework credits. It has been so successful that Times Higher Education nominated it for the widening participation initiative award in 2024. The university has done that by itself, with no extra money from the Government, and it has made significant progress.
You would never expect the University of St Andrews to be treating widening access as a top priority, but it does. Alongside its work on contextual admissions, its gateway programme, which I have seen for myself, provides a tailored first-year course for those from SIMD 20 backgrounds. It also provides a bridging year course, which helps students to get into the university. The university provides scholarships and engages in outreach to almost every school across the country that asks for it. Further, it provides a particular course for Fifers: First Chances Fife, which goes into some of the poorest communities in Fife, including Cowdenbeath, Lochgelly and Levenmouth. The university also provides mentoring.
I notice the difference that all those initiatives have made. When I go round the streets of St Andrews now, the accents are different—it is not all just Americans and people from England or other parts of the world. There are Glaswegians and even Fifers in the university now. There has been tremendous progress.
Both those institutions have risen to the challenge that the Government set for them. To be fair to the Government, it set that challenge, and the universities have responded positively to it. That shows what can be done if we set quite tough targets. However, we have not met those targets, and we therefore need to look again at why the progress that has been made by those institutions has stalled.
There are two things that we should consider. The first is that, with regard to widening access through schools, we have to acknowledge that the attempt to close the poverty-related attainment gap has not worked. It has been an aim for 10 years and the gap is supposed to have closed by next year, but we are nowhere near that happening. There is some infinitesimal improvement in primary schools, but, in secondary schools, progress has pretty well flatlined. Therefore, the students who are going off to universities are the ones who were already trying to access those courses.
Secondly, we take great pride in Scotland’s college route being a unique route into higher education, with people doing their national certificates and their higher national certificates and then working up to degree level, and the articulation that creates a smooth pathway into universities. Although the percentages of people coming through that route have increased in recent years, the actual number has fallen, which is an indication of the fact that, as Miles Briggs said, colleges have shrunk. We do not have as many people going into colleges, so we do not have as many people accessing that unique route into higher education.
That brings me to my next point. I wish that the Government would be honest with us about why it has not made progress on the unique learner number. We should have an open debate about the challenges. We acknowledge that, sometimes, such things are hard to do, but the Government is not being honest about it, and we get the impression that it is not that interested in doing it. It should be honest: if it does not want to do it, it should tell us why it is not going to do it and say what it is going to do instead.
There are means to do what needs to be done. For years, we were trying to get the two-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds into the nursery sector, but the numbers were pathetic. The Government went to the Department for Work and Pensions to access particular records in order to make sure that those children got in, and progress was made. We have managed to get the numbers up; it is not by as much as I would like, but it can be done. Therefore, I do not quite know why the Government is holding back on the issue. If it is not a priority, it should just be honest and say so.
To be fair to the Government, progress has been made, but it has flatlined. We should therefore re-examine our priorities, because, ultimately, this issue is about getting those from disadvantaged backgrounds into the workplace. We know that economic inactivity levels in Scotland are shocking. Widening access to higher education is part of the solution. We need to ensure that everybody has the opportunity to get a good job. I hope that, in his summing-up speech, the minister will have something substantive to say about how we can deal with the challenges that we face, so that, at last, we can make some progress.
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