Educational envy

I usually enjoy Hugh Reilly’s amusing views from the classroom, and now the retirement sofa, but Tuesday’s was a depressing example of social envy.

The general lack of success of the Scottish secondary education system is a national disgrace and may, in part, be seen as a result of an over-successful private sector in the main cities, but unless there is some miraculous revival of an overt socialist party coming to power and nationalising all schools, the status quo will continue.

The idea that the universities look at parental income and social status before allocating places is just silly. They allocate places on the basis of results in exams, and Scotland’s older universities demand the best results.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Other than stopping middle-class children from applying to these institutions – and even Hugh, I think, would not go that far – this will favour the children who have been brought up to expect to go to university.

There are plenty of Scottish students at the old universities, and most of them are our cleverest kids, so sneering at posh accents on University Challenge or mocking Mary Erskine kids and their “daddies” (yes, I’m one!) is actually an insult to them.

Sadly, that is part of the weird, inverted mentality of some who would rather insult our own for some imagined fault (birth, ambition, education?) rather than praise them.

It is shocking, but also not surprising, that children from deprived backgrounds rarely make it to the top universities, but attitudes like “Ah don’t want tae end up aw snobby like hur”, to quote Mr Reilly’s girl from Royston, will not improve matters.

We live in times when there is a higher chance of poorer children getting to university than ever before in Scottish history.

It’s not a huge chance, but it is there and possible. I would suggest ambition and determination might a better way forward than sneering at hard-working middle-class students.

Brian Bannatyne-Scott

Murrayfield Drive

As A sometime education worker, I always enjoy reading Hugh Reilly’s trenchant accounts of his experiences in the teaching profession.

As a working-class kid who did go to university, albeit at a time when higher education was affordable, I agree with many of the points in his piece about the perceived failure of current universities to recruit students from less affluent backgrounds.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

However, I can’t agree with him when he suggests that young people are settling for “less” when they choose an apprenticeship or a college course (I presume he means at a further education college) instead of completing an honours degree.

Many young people would love to obtain an apprenticeship, especially when, as Peter Jones points out in his article about the problems of jobless young people in Scotland, there are simply not enough to help young people into jobs.

I suspect the paucity of apprenticeships in recent years has been something to do with a type of academic snobbery which regarded university degrees as “better”. They are not, and never have been – years ago there were many HNC and HND courses available which offered excellent practical qualifications for those who preferred to learn in part on the job, and most employers regarded them as equivalent to a degree in a more theoretical topic.

On a possibly less contentious note – I leave St Andrews to defend itself from Hugh’s accusations of elitism – here on Deeside I hear more “posh Home Counties accents” from native Scots than I ever did when resident in said Home Counties. So maybe Hugh needs to examine his own prejudices before taking a swipe at Scottish universities!

(Dr) Mary Brown

Dalvenie Road

Banchory

Related topics: