Disadvantaged Scots are finally able to get their foot in the university door

Like many others, I’d been a critic of the way that most of our top universities had excluded children from disadvantaged backgrounds from accessing their professional degree courses such as medicine, dentistry and law. This was done through an insidious and subtle form of social gerrymandering which failed lamentably to take account of the social challenges faced by many children from some of our poorest communities.

READ MORE: Inequality is still rife in our society – just look at the plight of women

Our judicial system permits judges to seek background reports on people found guilty of crimes. In this way they can measure the weight of a sentence by taking into account mitigating circumstances.

Our failure to embed a similar approach in our higher education system has probably robbed tens of thousands of bright working-class children of careers and life-changing opportunities that their natural gifts deserve.

It also deprived Scotland of a huge slice of natural-grown talent while at the same time maintaining a pattern of inequality and unfairness in the way that our society is governed. Effectively, the nation was saying that our brightest and best children resided only in our most affluent neighbourhoods.

The Lord alone knows how many doctors, lawyers and judges only attained their lofty positions thanks to an expensively-purchased education topped up by countless hours of private tuition.

How many of them would have flourished when faced with the economic and social privations faced daily by children from poor neighbourhoods?

Thus, our most vital professions – those which can dramatically alter the course of a person’s life – include many who are not the brightest and the best but are instead the most affluent and well-supported.

When the University of Glasgow embarked on its widening access programme, less than 5% of its medical students came from Scotland’s most disadvantaged communities. This year, that figure has reached 19.5% – which more accurately reflects the economic, cultural and social map of Scotland.

The University of Glasgow deserves great credit for taking the lead in addressing the systematic unfairness that underpins the social arrangements of this country.

The Scottish Government and in particular, Nicola Sturgeon, are also entitled to derive a significant degree of satisfaction at these outcomes.

In Scotland we are never more than a few weeks away from another set of figures pointing to under-achievement in our schools and the scarcity of children from deprived backgrounds gaining more than one Higher at secondary school. Glasgow University’s success in bringing fairness to its qualification tariffs will help greatly.

It has the potential to provide authentic academic role models for communities such as these and it will encourage teachers to tell their pupils to reach for the stars.

We will only know that a revolution is under way in this area when our top law firms and the HR departments of our civil service, police and army similarly look beyond the old school tie, the golf course and the Masonic Lodge for senior staff. And when Scotland’s last remaining private school is forced to close its doors for the last time then we’ll know that we have truly achieved fairness and equality in our education system.

Why more of us should consider re-calibration

I WISH the very best of luck to the 69-year-old Dutch businessman who is mounting a legal action to be allowed to identify as a 49-year-old. 

In a television interview earlier this week, Emile Ratelband, pictured above, pointed out that among the benefits accruing to the state if he is successful is the saving of several years of pension pay-outs. If his example were to be followed by many others then the boost to the national economy could be incalculable. 

In Scotland we seem to be making it easier for people to identify as a different gender from the one they were (apparently) born with. Therefore, I think we should consider legislation enabling some of us to shave a few years from our birth certificates too. 

With middle-aged blokes like me who hail from the West of Scotland there are some obvious challenges, but nothing that some hair-colouring (and restoring), teeth-whitening, pallor-improving and skin-tightening couldn’t achieve. Not to mention the purchase of a few pairs of yon M&S stretchy waist breeks and some delicate clippers for nostril and ear-hair. 

A dear friend sent me on the way in this journey of re-discovery by buying me a NutriBullet blender. I now have more fruit in my fridge than the man from Del Monte and have lately begun to add vegetables to the elixir. I am, as they say in some of Glasgow’s edgier neighbourhoods, pure rattling with nutrients. I’ve also begun to add an extra slice of citrus to my Bacardi’s and leaving far bigger stubs on my cigarettes. 

I feel that men and women experiencing an extra bounce in their step should have the opportunity to re-calibrate their age and thus delay taking up their pensions and free bus passes. 

There is a concomitant risk to this, of course. For some of us it would take 30 years of constant NutriBullet activity to offset a lifetime of scrofulous living. Finding out you’re still the body of a man 10 years older could trigger depression and increase stress levels. Better that we just keep deluding ourselves that we’re heading in the right direction.

Scotland's Catholic controvery is puzzling

ACCORDING to statistics released earlier this year by the Scottish Government, Catholics in Scotland (the vast majority of whom are of Irish descent) are the victims of 57% of all reported religiously aggravated offences.

Catholics are now the victims of more hate crime than all other religious groups in Scotland combined. This is also an increasing trend, showing a 14% increase in one year. Yet, according to some Scots, if the letters pages of this paper and others are a reliable indicator, Catholic schools are part of 
the problem. 

READ MORE: Letters: Children of all faiths should be educated together

Of all faith groups in Scotland, support for Scottish independence was highest among the Catholic community. There is a complex set of reasons for this but one of the major ones is rooted in the ideas of fairness and social justice rooted in the Gospel of Christ and a perceived failure by the Labour Party in Scotland to stand up for them. 

Earlier this year, Nicola Sturgeon issued a powerful endorsement of the value that Catholic schools provide to Scottish society and their record of academic achievement and of reinforcing values of social justice. She said: “Educating people in a way which is compatible with the Catholic faith and Catholic values doesn’t isolate them – it goes hand in hand with encouraging and enabling them to contribute to their wider community.” 

She added that this included “ensuring that all children – regardless of gender, race, faith, disability or sexual orientation – are brought up in a welcoming environment, without any fear of discrimination or bullying”.

It’s a shame that there still exist many Scots who have a curious concept of what an enlightened, diverse and inclusive Scotland ought to look like.