Hugh Reilly: Education ‘experts’ fail humanity exam

GOD, they say, loves a trier, but even His affection was tested to the limit last week on discovering the latest attempt by Reform Scotland (RF) to influence the country’s education system.
Hugh Reilly. Picture: Robert PerryHugh Reilly. Picture: Robert Perry
Hugh Reilly. Picture: Robert Perry

Whenever two or more right-wing aficionados of the nation’s leading crackpot think tank gather – that is, a quorum – they excitedly recall that body setting up a group of, erm, education experts in 2012, led by Ross Martin, ex-teacher and current record-holder of losing a Holyrood seat to an independent (Dennis Canavan) by the greatest number of votes.

In a cunning move to throw investigative journalists off the scent, RF called their front organisation The Commission for School Reform (TCSF). After minutes of profound research, in a shock report totally unexpected from a group containing conservative capitalist thinkers, RF demanded an end to “bog standard” comprehensives (though what constituted a bog standard school was never made clear). This caused a stooshie on a scale not seen since a war-weary Thracian PoW captured by the Romans stood up and said: “By the way, that bloke over there with dimpled chin is Spartacus.”

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When presented with the implausible incontrovertible evidence gathered by TCSF that state schools were failing Alba’s youngsters, Scottish Government officials listened intently before gently ushering a babbling and clearly agitated Mr Martin out of the education minister’s office.

Thinking outside the box while staring at a blue sky, the sages of RF contend that sending more high-attaining pupils from deprived backgrounds to university rather than college could harm the status of the college sector. In its quest to ensure that the middle-class ambience of higher education remains undiluted by the presence of feral children born of the deserving poor, RF undertook extensive research that, I must admit, came up with a conclusion that few could have countenanced. Cynical press hacks who thought they’d seen it all feverishly implored editors to hold the front page on hearing Geoff Mawdsley, a director at Reform Scotland, say: “Our research indicates that school-leavers from the most deprived areas of Scotland are far more likely to go to college than university.” Having personally conducted covert surveillance on its internal communications systems, I can exclusively reveal that RF’s next public pronouncement concerns the shocking news that kids in deprived areas are more likely to be eligible for free school meals.

The very concept that the status of colleges, the ugly sister of post-school education forced to survive on buttons from the government, will be diminished by bright kids from undesirable postcodes infesting universities in St Andrews, Edinburgh or Glasgow is risible. As the father of a son who has just completed a two year course at a further education establishment, I sincerely applaud the efforts of college staff who do their best in very difficult circumstances.

However, my son’s decision to study a college qualification was not an act of solidarity with the urban poor, more a result of failing to gain the necessary SQA highers to embark on a university degree.

The good people at RF appear to think that intelligent teenagers from peripheral housing schemes should know their place and not invade the personal space of private school students and peers from state schools in prosperous areas. Thatcher’s apostles appear to believe that the SNP administration should scrap its proposed spending of £40 million to ensure 700 intelligent youngsters living in poverty-afflicted households get a leg-up. This integrity-free group, it seems, is intent on giving kids from the school of hard-knocks another brutal dunt.

Colleges will survive the bright-flight of disadvantaged intelligent youth; there is, after all, a conveyor belt of underachieving children whose lives and opportunities continue to be blighted by poverty. Further education establishments exist to provide vocational training and, for some, a springboard to university. By dint of praiseworthy government intervention, a few who would have coasted at college will instead arrive at the cloisters of a university.

In my view, universities will be richer for having a cross-section of undergraduates that more adequately reflects the communities they serve. Try as they may, Reform Scotland will not succeed in reversing the positive direction in which access to higher education is moving.

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