Sunday, January 19, 2020


Scotland: No tuition fees? No thanks

How the SNP's no-fees policy is harming Scotland's young people. There may be no fees but enrolment is severely limited

Attempting to entice the electorate with freebies was a prominent part of the Labour Party’s General Election campaign. Yet although the electorate rejected Labour, the popularity of its pledge to abolish university fees has prompted some to suggest that university education in England, Northern Ireland and Wales should be as it is in Scotland; namely, free.

In truth, however, Scotland illustrates the danger of taking the offer of free higher education at face value.

Since 2008, the Scottish government, led by the Scottish National Party, has provided free tuition for Scottish domicile and EU students attending Scottish universities. It also sees this policy as a way to expand HE participation among the most socially disadvantaged. But despite SNP headlines that the number of Scottish students in post-compulsory education is at an all-time high, drilling down into the data tells a very different story.

According to public-spending watchdog, Audit Scotland, only one fifth of applicants who attended the elite Edinburgh University and St Andrews University in 2015 came from Scotland. UCAS statistics for 2018-19 indicate that the number of Scottish students attending Scottish universities declined by four per cent in comparison with 2014.

This is a long-term trend. Since 2010, the proportion of offers to Scottish students from Scottish universities has consistently fallen. One in five Scottish students did not receive an offer from a Scottish university in 2015. In contrast, offer rates to RUK (Rest of UK) and non-EU students have increased by on average 11 per cent between 2010 and 2015.

The SNP has overseen a period of marked disinvestment in the Scottish higher-education sector. A recent Public Funding Observatory Report, produced by the European Universities Association (EUA), has suggested that levels of public funding in Scottish universities are in ‘sustained decline’, and are as low as sector levels in Italy, the Czech Republic and Serbia.

Far from widening participation, the Scottish government’s no-tuition-fees policy, and continual disinvestment, has created a two-tier system that treats Scottish students as second-class citizens, and actively penalises Scottish universities for recruiting Scottish students.

This crisis is the very real result of SNP-enforced austerity. As Audit Scotland suggests, government funding to the university sector has been reduced by 12 per cent over the past seven years. In effect, Scottish universities have been subjected to a level of penury that would make the most fiscally punitive Tory blush.

In recent years, however, the issue of tuition fees has been used by successive devolved administrations to signal Scotland’s ethical and caring approach to capitalism. Although tuition fees were abolished in 2000 by the first devolved administration – a Labour / Liberal Democrat coalition – it wasn’t until 2008 that tuition could be considered properly free in Scotland, when the first SNP government scrapped the one-off graduate endowment fee (of just over £2,000).

In 2011, the then Lib-Con coalition UK government announced it was raising the cap on fees at English universities from £3,375 to £9,000. The decision was made against a background of public-sector austerity and a £600million real-terms budget reduction for three-quarters of English universities.

Following Scottish elections later that same year, the Alex Salmond-led majority SNP administration reaffirmed its opposition to the reintroduction of tuition fees in Scotland. As Mike Russell MSP said at the time, ‘higher education is, and will continue to be, based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay’. However, the SNPs apparent egalitarianism was not extended to all. Only those students domiciled in Scotland and the EU would be eligible to pay no tuition fees. Scottish universities would be free to charge higher variable tuition fees to students domiciled in the rest of the UK and those outside the EU.

Under EU rules, all EU nationals are entitled to access a fellow member state’s education system on the same terms as the state’s own nationals. However, these rules do not apply to the regional education systems within member states. Scottish universities are allowed to charge students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while offering students from the EU free tuition.

The policy has proved a total disaster for Scottish students and Scottish university education more broadly. The actual number of places available to Scottish undergraduates is policed through the imposition of a cap. The Scottish government limits the number of Scottish domiciles that Scottish universities can recruit to their courses and programmes, and imposes financial penalties on those universities that do not adhere to the cap. SNP austerity has been exacerbated by the no-fees policy and it is clear that the policy is now beginning to bite hard

More than half of Scottish universities are in deficit. There are of course notable exceptions. As Audit Scotland notes, financial surpluses are disproportionately concentrated in three of Scotland’s four elite universities – Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews. But the institutions in deficit are precisely those now dependent on recruiting Scottish students. Government funding now accounts for 56 per cent of modern university income – the most significant proportion of this being the SFC-grant funding of Scottish domicile and EU places.

Despite this being the era of ‘no tuition fees’, tuition fees have replaced government funding as the single largest source of income for most Scottish universities. Scottish government-funded fees for Scottish domiciled and EU students are notoriously inadequate. At £1,820 per academic year, they pale in comparison to the average fees Scottish universities can now charge RUK (£9,250) and non-EU (from £10,000 to £26,000 per academic year) undergraduates. The recruitment cap and the enormous income discrepancy between fees implicitly discriminates against those Scottish students whom the SNP policy purports to be helping, because it both limits the numbers of them that can get into university, and effectively limits the universities they can actually attend.

Under the current funding regime, Scottish universities are forced to increase income by targeting RUK and non-EU international students. It will come as no surprise that the income from RUK students has increased by £68million (66 per cent) since 2014- 2015. Over the same period, income from non-EU students has increased by £148million (31 per cent) since 2014-15. It will also come as no surprise that it is the elite Scottish universities that have benefited most from this market – accounting for 66 per cent of the overall increase in fee income across the whole sector from the non-EU undergraduate market.

Deliberately locked out of Scotland’s elite universities, which look to the RUK and non-EU markets, the majority of Scottish students end up either in clearing, or at those very universities whose lack of access to RUK and non-EU markets has already left them financially challenged. Universities Scotland, the representative body of Scotland’s 19 HE institutions, has consistently argued that the funding to cover free tuition is wholly inadequate and does not cover the actual cost involved in a student’s university education. As a result, these already struggling universities are forced to subsidise this obvious shortfall through cuts to teaching and support staff.

It is an added irony that those universities most penalised by the SNP are the very same institutions that are blazing a trail in widening participation – the Scottish government’s key strategic priority for Scottish higher education. For the academic year 2017-18, the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) had an operating deficit of £3.3 million – a three per cent fall on 2016-17. For the same period, the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh operated on a surplus of £23.5million and £27.5million respectively.

These massive inequalities are pretty easy to understand once placed within the context of SNP cuts in higher-education funding. Sixty per cent of UWS income comes from SFC grants (ie, subsidised student places). This is the second highest in Scotland. Only 18 per cent of Edinburgh University’s total operating income is generated from SFC grants. For St Andrews, it is even lower, at 15 per cent. However, UWS is a sector leader in widening participation. Eighty per cent of UWS Scottish domicile entrants to full-time undergraduate study are drawn from Scotland’s most deprived areas, as defined by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. Again, this isn’t that surprising given that UWS’s main campus in Paisley is a stone’s throw from Ferguslie Park, a suburb of Paisley and one of the poorest and most deprived areas in Europe. But, as members of this cohort have the poorest progression and highest non-completion rates when at university, UWS is rewarded for its efforts to widen participation with government sanctions.

The SNP commitment to free tuition equates to an attack on Scottish higher education. University teaching and research have become subordinate to chasing income markets that the vast majority of Scottish universities have no real access to. Knowledge and scholarly endeavour now play second fiddle to universities’ financial imperatives. On the whole, higher education in Scotland means little more than packing students into under-resourced and failing learning environments, and then telling them they should be grateful for it.

In 11 years, the SNP has decimated Scottish higher education. The ‘fauxgalitarian’ rhetoric of no tuition fees has allowed it to pose as a bulwark against the increasing consumerism dominating the sector in England. In reality, however, a very real and heavy price has been paid. Rather than helping Scottish students get to university, the SNP actively discriminates against them, especially those from the poorest social backgrounds. Scottish students get to go to university not because of the SNPs no-fees policy, but despite it. Effectively excluded from Scotland’s elite universities, they find themselves at institutions penalised for recruiting Scottish students.

Ill-defined and ill thought out, like many SNP policies, free tuition is born of a desire to virtue-signal. Rather than really opposing the neoliberal valorisation of higher education, the SNP offers a textbook example of neoliberalism in action. Revanchist in principle and practice, the SNP’s policy deliberately targets and punishes Scotland’s young people.

SOURCE






Failing schools must be focus of next Boston mayoral race

In Boston, unlike in most Massachusetts communities, members of the school committee are appointed by the mayor. The theory is that with power centralized in City Hall, there’s a clear line of accountability: Since the mayor ultimately calls the shots, he’s responsible for results in the Boston Public Schools ― full stop.

That model works, though, only if voters and other elected officials actually hold mayors accountable for Boston’s still-troubled schools, instead of letting education fade into the background during election years. So it was especially refreshing to see District 4 city councilor and potential mayoral candidate Andrea Campbell make pointed criticisms last week of the gaps in Mayor Marty Walsh’s record, forcing the mayor’s office to mount a detailed defense and thrusting Bostonians’ festering unhappiness with the schools out into the open.

If the exchange is a taste of what’s to come next year, then public education is poised to take the front-burner position it deserves heading into the 2021 election. Political leaders are starting to talk with more candor about the uneven quality of the city’s schools, which should spur discussion of the tough choices needed to improve them.

The back-and-forth started on Jan. 7, after Walsh’s State of the City speech, when he announced $100 million of new investment in “direct classroom funding” for the school district to be phased in over the next three years.

Campbell wasn’t impressed and, in a statement, called out the news as part of a “disturbing pattern of flashy announcements that feature big dollar figures, but never change the dynamic for children and families.” On Twitter, she wrote: “In order to ensure every family has access to a quality BPS school, we need more than announcements & money thrown at the problem.”

Campbell’s strong words about the troubling state of the Boston schools reflect widespread and justified disappointment over the lack of progress at closing persistent achievement gaps in the system, which consistently produces sub-par results for black and Latino students.

Last year, roughly 42 percent of Boston schools that receive a grade from the state were shown to require assistance and intervention; a third of them are in the bottom 10 percent statewide. The annual dropout rate increased, while chronic absenteeism worsened. It’s no wonder the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently launched a comprehensive review of the Boston system, which could result in the state taking control of the city’s schools.

Campbell’s criticism was blunt. “Roughly 80 percent of students in downtown Boston attend high-quality schools, compared with only 5 percent of students in Mattapan,” she wrote. That’s based on a 2018 district-commissioned report that found that the assignment system is keeping many kindergarten students of color out of the best schools, while the vast majority of their peers in Charlestown, the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and central Boston have access to those schools. “Nearly 4 out of 10 non-exam school students will not graduate from high school,” the statement went on. In an interview, Campbell said she’s “frustrated with the lack of urgency and responsiveness . . . as well as a lack of acknowledgment that some parts of the district are doing well and some other parts are not.”

Six years into his mayoralty, Walsh owns those numbers. Granted, education policy is a political minefield — just remember the backlash when BPS tried to adjust school start times — but that’s no excuse.

Asked for comment after Campbell’s remarks, BPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said in an interview that she gets and shares Campbell’s sense of urgency. She said she views the state’s review of BPS as a gift for a new superintendent like her because it will serve as another set of eyes on the schools. “I didn’t come here to kind of tinker around the edges," she said. Cassellius added she wants BPS to adopt MassCORE, the state’s curriculum framework that Boston has resisted embracing out of fear that it will hurt graduation rates. On Wednesday, she rolled out a five-year draft plan that would include full implementation of universal pre-K but was mostly lacking in details.

If you ask Bostonians what issues they care about most in the city, you’ll probably hear angry rants about the T, the high cost of housing, and the unequal access to good schools. Of the three, education is perhaps where strong and effective mayoral leadership can make the most difference. Walsh has had some recent wins, including placing a full-time nurse in every school and hiring more mental health counselors. Hopefully, the infusion of money he announced in the State of the City will have an impact. Campbell, if she runs, will have to go beyond diagnosing problems to offering specific solutions. But for now, the real talk about public schools is welcome — and critical for holding Walsh accountable in his second term.

SOURCE






Australia: Teachers rushed in

Students hired to fill widening gap

AN INCREASING number of Queensland university students are being approved to teach before they have officially graduated, as the state is gripped by a shortage of educators. The Courier-Mail can reveal that last year, 99 students in education courses were granted Permission to Teach (PTT) waivers by Education Queensland to help fill the gap in schools without enough teachers — 39 more early approvals than in 2018.

But a Department of Education spokeswoman said the number of teachers on PTT represented "only a fraction of all new teachers hired" and they taught in schools for an average of one semester. The spokeswoman said that the approvals issued included those for students who had finished their courses, but were yet to graduate and be registered as teachers.

The main criteria for a PTT, which is assessed by the Queensland College of Teachers, includes evidence that no "appropriate" registered teacher is already available for that position, and evidence that the applicant has the skills and ability relevant to the job, and is "suitable to teach".

Queensland Teachers' Union president Kevin Bates said the process should be used only as a last resort and he was concerned the number issued was increasing. Mr Bates said that a concerning number of teachers were already forced to teach outside of their specialty, and this could place increasing pressure on new teachers employed under PTTs.

"It can complicate things enormously ... in remote and rural areas you usually have to teach something you're not trained in, and that involves an enormous amount of additional work," he said. "A teacher in a western school who is trained as a junior primary school teacher is teaching a secondary art and a math class simply because there aren't enough teachers.

"PTT should be a last resort only and should not be seen as an easy option for HR systems to fill a gap. We need to have a long-term view to make sure teachers are available to teach every class."

Mr Bates said those teachers needed more support. "If they're coming in on PTT, the standard induction and support of the Beginning to Teach program is simply not enough."

During 2019, the department employed more than 1400 new teachers, and 500 new teachers have already accepted appointments to start in 2020, an Education spokeswoman said.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 15 Jan., 2020




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