Today’s SLC statistics on student debt not only provide figures for those leaving the system (see here), they also cover existing students.
The figures show that total new lending to students in 2014-15 was £516.2m, breaching the £0.5bn mark for the first time. Fee loans account for some of this, but the bulk of the growth is in living cost loans.
Here are the figures for the last three years, taken from Table 1 in this document.
| 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | |
| Maintenance loans | 248.8 | 409.2 | 485.2 |
| Fee loans | 28 | 27 | 30.9 |
| Total lending | 276.8 | 436.2 | 516.1 |
| +58% | +18% |
The increase will be due mainly to the new system brought in in autumn 2013 still feeding through: its introduction spanned the financial years 2013-14 and 2014-15. This should account for most of the increase seen here. In 2014-15, there was also a small increase in loan entitlements (worth £250 per student) which will have increased borrowing a little. There does not look to have been any significant increase in the proportion of students taking out a loan. The statistics due in October will confirm what is driving the increase.
The budget figure for 2014-15 (£468m) was for net new lending, that is total lending after taking account of any repayments. So these figures are interesting because they are first information we have on gross/total new lending under the new arrangements in Scotland.
In terms of annual lending, England still made something over double the use of loans pro rata its size (its total lending was around £10 billion) and also saw an 18% increase. The other two devolved nations lent less in absolute terms than Scotland: Wales £359m, Northern Ireland £298m (both saw a 9% increase). This is still more in relation to size, but their gap with Scotland is lower, at more like one and half times as much.
As always these comparisons bring out that Scotland is generally still a lower debt system, but not fundamentally different from the rest of the UK in relying increasingly heavily on the use of student loans.
The Student Loans Company has just published the figures for the average debt students in each part of the UK have on entering repayment – in effect, graduates’ total final debt.
The figures are increasing in all 4 UK countries: see table below. Scotland continues to have the lowest absolute figure, but the impact of changes to its student support system in 2013-14 are now feeding through, giving it the highest percentage increase, at 26%, and the highest 5-year change, at 37%.
The changes in Scotland only affected the final year of study for this cohort: it will take several more years for the full effect of the changes introduced in 2013-14 to feed through. Rises on a similar scale are likely to be repeated next year and the year after.
The Scottish Government regularly uses this UK comparison to defend its decision to reduce spending on grants: the First Minister recently quoted the 2014 ones during FMQs. Whether this jump in the Scottish number will affect its future use remains to be seen. These figures are not, for example, mentioned in today’s news release on a UCAS analysis of applications since 2006.
In comparing these figures across the UK, some strong health warnings are needed, which are discussed in more detail here. In summary,
- Scotland has a higher proportion of students on one- and two-year HN-level courses, which pulls down its average. The Scottish figure represents the equivalent of a little under 3 years’ worth of borrowing, while the standard length degree is four years. Figures for the other UK nations also equal around 3 years’ borrowing on average – but that is much more typically the length of time it takes to obtain a degree in those places. So to compare the average experience of a university student, the Scottish figure needs to be “grossed up” by one-third (giving just over £12,500, closing the gap but still lower than elsewhere).
- More importantly, the average conceals considerable variation by income. This is particularly true in Scotland where – uniquely – those from lower incomes tend to borrow above average, rather than below – see here. The Student Awards Agency for Scotland separately records annual borrowing by income (see footnote). Using that data, average borrowing by students from the lowest incomes in Scotland in the four years up to 2014 comes to between £16,000 and £20,000, depending on whether they are young or mature.
The figures derived from SAAS data give a much more accurate reflection of what poorer Scots leaving university in Scotland last year will typically have borrowed than the much lower SLC figure issued today. For these students, the SAAS-derived figures suggest that for the cohort leaving university last year, degree-length borrowing for poorer students in Scotland was comparable with that in the rest of the UK and not, as the SLC figures are often wrongly used to imply, significantly lower.
SLC figures released 18 June 2015
Figures have been provided by SLC back to 2010.
| Change | |||||||||
| 2010 | 2014 | 2015 | Yr-on-Yr | £ | 5 yrs | ||||
| England | 14680 | 20060 | 21180 | 6% | 1120 | 31% | |||
| Northern Ireland | 12540 | 17340 | 18160 | 5% | 820 | 31% | |||
| Scotland | 5950 | 7480 | 9440 | 26% | 1960 | 37% | |||
| Wales | 12580 | 17230 | 19010 | 10% | 1780 | 34% | |||
The figures do not take into account the increase in fees in 2012 for English students and most of those crossing a UK border to study. The first graduates from that group are only completing their studies this summer. Only the small numbers of students included n these figures who for whatever reason left their course early will have been affected. The English figures will increase sharply next year, as will those for Northern Ireland, a significant minority of whose students go to the rest of the UK and are now paying higher fees. Only Welsh students will be unaffected, as they receive a fee grant which has sheltered them from the change, wherever they study. It can be confidently predicted that next year’s figures will be very large news indeed.
Footnote
Average actual borrowing at low incomes from 2010-11, using figures from Table 12 in the three SAAS data sets linked. 2013-14 figures do not provide a separate category for “exempt” (mainly mature) students , or for incomes up to £10,000, which will be where the poorest young students are mainly found: figures for incomes up to £16,999 have been used for both, from Table A6 of the linked document.
| Exempt (ie Nil income) | <£10,000 | ||
| 2010-11 | 3199 | 4508 | |
| 2011-12 | 3490 | 4805 | |
| 2012-13 | 3715 | 4965 | |
| 2013-14 | 5610 | 5610 | |
| 16014 | 19888 |
[Update: this was written before the announcement that grants would be phased out completely from 2016 – a more up-to-date comparison now posted here.]
Discussing the announcement of a £450m cut to the BIS budget, Andrew McGettigan argues persuasively that the government may be about to reduce student grants in England and replace an element of them with loan. He estimates that £1,000 cut in grant would save over £350m – a large part of the saving needed.
If this happens, the Conservative Government at Westminster will be adopting a model pioneered by the Scottish Government, which implemented exactly this policy in 2013, reducing grants for young students by some 40%, meaning cuts of over £1,000 a year for many, and replacing that funding with loan, as analysed here. In a twist on the poll tax, a Conservative policy for England would have been tried out first in Scotland, but by an SNP government.
Of course, Scotland’s grant cuts were not on top of the high fees which apply in England. But that’s doubled-edged in effect.
Adding £3,000 to a debt of £40,000+ at first sight looks a lot worse than increasing debt by £4,000 or a bit more, to something between £20,000 and £30,000.
But it is likely that for many of the English students affected, this increase will have no effect on what they pay back – because they already won’t be paying back this very large loan as it stands. The last, unpaid part of their debt will be written off – the grant cuts will simply mean the write-off is larger. It’s the Macbeth scenario (“I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as to go o’er”) – students can get to a point where they are so steeped in debt that borrowing more probably won’t make things any worse in practice, as long as the government continues to write-off unpaid amounts at a certain point (30 years in England).
By contrast, it is much more likely that Scottish borrowers will pay back their whole debt, at its new level as well as its old one, particularly if Scotland persists in having a lower loan repayment threshold (just over £17,000 in Scotland: £21,000 in England) and a longer period before write off (35 years in Scotland).
So – ironically and counter-intuitively – the grant-to-loan switch in Scotland is much more likely to have a real effect on poorer students than the same manoeuvre in England.
That doesn’t mean cuts in England should just be shrugged off – some students from poorer backgrounds will end up paying back more. Also, as has happened in Scotland, there may be students who simply won’t take out more living cost loan to compensate and so suffer more immediate hardship. It’s also unknowable whether a further increase debt – however likely or not to be paid – may deter certain people from applying or increase drop-out. For all that higher fees in England have coincided with an increase in applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds, we still don’t really understand very well exactly how changes in student funding affect behaviour (and we have this limited evidence about grant). Last of all, though a £1,000 pa cut wouldn’t mean that England would join Scotland in expecting its poorest students to have the highest debt, the debt position of those poorer students would still worsen relative to some of their better-off peers.
Still, Scotland’s own recent history and the counter-intuitive effect of pre-existing high debt for fees will present a challenge to anyone who wants to criticise grant cuts in England from a perspective which seeks to put Scotland in a more flattering light, whether from within the ranks of Scotland’s new MPs or elsewhere.
It will be interesting also to compare what sort of reaction any cuts in England get, in the media or from student representatives. The cuts in Scotland, of course, passed with almost no media comment and have never been criticised by NUS Scotland. They have never even been announced, or even acknowledged, by the Scottish Government, whose relevant Minister just last month managed to suggest they hadn’t happened – even if she later corrected herself. Even if the policy content turns out to be similar, it seems very unlikely that the UK Government will be able to get away with the same sort of presentational free pass as its counterpart in Edinburgh has enjoyed, in Scotland’s less rigorous environment of government scrutiny.
Today’s Herald reports that Unison has published research into the support of student nurses and midwives, as a contribution to the current review of financial support for this group. The review was announced in November – more about it here.
Unison is pressing for increases in bursaries.
The response from the Health Secretary is interesting reading when looked at in the broader context of student funding (emphasis added):
The core element of nursing and midwifery student support in Scotland remains non-means tested and non-repayable, unlike the support package for nursing and midwifery students in England, where the majority of potential funding support is either means tested or repayable.
We’ll ensure that support for nursing and midwifery students in Scotland fairly reflects the needs of all students with diverse personal circumstances.
In response to criticism, the obligatory comparison with England is made. But there’s an edge here. Ms Robison could have added that for all other students in Scotland also, “the majority of potential funding support is either means tested or repayable”.
Indeed, the government has made a virtue of how more use of loans has allowed it to respond to concerns expressed by NUS Scotland about immediate financial pressures. If student support being “either means tested or repayable” is a problem, someone needs to have a word with the Education Directorate and indeed the First Minister. The “minimum income guarantee” of £7,500 for students was the centrepiece of the FM’s recent attempt to see off criticism of grant cuts for poorer students: just under 25% of that comes as means-tested grant and the rest is repayable loan.
Student nurses and midwives are in a different position from most other students, coming closer to serving an apprenticeship on the wards: their support might be viewed as closer to a wage. This is reflected in Unison rather than the NUS acting as their advocates. But that also means that their capacity to take on additional jobs (as many appear to be doing) is more limited – and working too many hours elsewhere could, in extremis, presumably have public safety implications. So concerns about hardship in this group have to be taken pretty seriously.
Which brings us back to Shona Robison’s comment. How to read it?
Above all, it underlines is that the SG is far from having a coherent philosophy of student funding, unsure whether means-tested and repayable student funding is good or bad and, especially, where loan sits in relation to grant. Are the two more or less interchangeable, as implied by the government’s promotion of its “minimum income guarantee” for mainstream students, which it uses to meet any criticism of grant cuts? Or are loans much less good, as implied in the quote above and in line with the SNP’s “dump the debt” campaign of 2007?
The balanced answer would be that student loans are both less desirable from the perspective of students than grants, but also a lesser evil than acute hardship or commercial debt, as long as students are willing to take them on. It’s not a black and white issue, but one that demands nuance and honesty, whatever students are being discussed. But Scottish Ministers seem inclined instead to take contradictory positions at either end of the spectrum, depending on which students they are talking about, what’s happening in England and, at least until now, whether debt is replacing cash subsidies for living costs or fees.
The Cabinet Secretary wrote last week to Michael McMahon MSP, correcting her statement to the Scottish Parliament that bursaries had not been cut (see here) and undertaking to go through the formal process of correcting the parliamentary record (it’s not yet visibly changed, as at the time of writing, but that’s no doubt in progress).
The text of her letter is included in this FT blog post,which points out that the correction does not go as far as admitting bursaries were cut, only that there have not been cuts in student support more generally. This is true, because so much additional loan has come into the system, off-setting overall the effect of grant cuts. The reaction from the opposition was reported here.
Although it is difficult to see what alternative there would have been without breaching the ministerial code, it’s welcome all the same that this correction has been volunteered relatively quickly. The letter was written on the same day the issue was raised at FMQs, where the FM declined to respond to questions on the government’s record on bursaries, concentrating on other issues: see the FT blog above and elsewhere in the media.
The Guardian’s 2015 university league table was published this week. The table is intended as guide for students and is built up from detailed information collected course by course (it does not take research ranking into account).
Often, HE league tables prompt a news release from the Scottish Government or Universities Scotland. This one hasn’t yet done so, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing of interest for Scottish readers. This one in particular suggests a line of inquiry for the Commission on Widening Access.
The table here (by this author) – Guardian table 2015 – shows how Scottish universities rank within the UK across the various measures used in the table. The Guardian has published detailed methodology notes on each of its measures and how they are combined.
The Scottish results largely blend in with the rest. Students’ satisfaction with their course is less good than across the UK as a whole, but satisfaction with teaching fares better: Scotland has three of the top ten in the UK, even if it still weights a little towards the lower end overall. Scottish institutions do proportionately better on career results 6 months out, and also on “value added” (St Andrews stands out in the UK for its combination of high entrance qualifications with high “added value”).
Where Scotland stands out most, however, is the “average entry tariff”, that is, the exam results of entrants. The figures deal specifically with entrants under 21 to full-time first year courses, as measured using UCAS points (see footnote). The figures will include students from elsewhere in the UK and overseas, as well Scotland.
For exam scores on entrance, Scottish institutions cluster in the top half of the table. Thirteen of the fourteen Scottish institutions featured are in top half of the listings. Five are in the top twenty, out of a total UK sample of 119. In other words, entrance to university courses in Scotland appears to involve higher exam results than in the UK as a whole: the opportunities to get on a degree course with less good results are more limited.
If this is a real result, and not an artefact of the way results are counted (see below), there is an issue here for the Commission on Widening Access.
Many will welcome higher entrance qualifications as the sign of a system which is preserving its standards: that would be one reasonable response. However, there are also strong signs that, however much work is put into raising aspiration and dedicated access initiatives, attainment at school still has the largest impact on access (see here, though other research makes similar points). The more selective the system, the greater the challenge in raising attainment.
There are plenty of health warnings to apply here. Though this uses well-established UCAS scoring for exam results (the UCAS tariff system is here), it’s possible these over-weight Highers against the A levels and BTECs mainly used in England. Also, more students in Scotland move into degree course from Year 2 onwards, from an HN course in an FE college. They will not show here, though the numbers may not be large enough to make a substantial difference to the overall results.
Also, if the issue is access to any form of higher education rather than university-level HE, then the extensive provision of HN-level HE in Scottish FE colleges, not included here, matters too. However, if access to university level HE is the issue (as recent statements by the First Minister suggest is the case), then these comparisons look relevant. They would, for example, raise questions about how far tighter number controls on the system in Scotland may be affecting entrance requirements. There is already some evidence that candidates with lower qualifications are more likely to go to study elsewhere in the UK (although border crossers tend to be from more advantaged backgrounds).
Last of all, all league tables are full of arguable assumptions and need to be read with a bit of critical scepticism. The figures for student: staff ratios and spend per student (and indeed employment) will be affected by the mix of courses provided: Scotland has traditionally had larger proportion of students in medicine and health-related subjects, for example. The Guardian figures are designed principally to be used to compare the same course at different institutions: the aggregate university figures are a by-product of that. Some Scottish institutions feature only in subject tables and not in the overall rankings, because they are relatively specialised.
Even allowing for all that, if the entrance tariff comparisons here are right in revealing a relative absence of lower-tariff opportunities to enter university in Scotland, then this is likely to be one of the “barriers to access” the Commission has been asked to identify. That does not preclude Scottish policy makers and politicians deciding this is a barrier they wish to leave in place: but if it could be affecting Scotland’s relative performance on widening access, it is at least worth exploring and discussing.
Footnote: the way entrance tariffs have been measured
g. Entry scores
Average tariffs are determined by taking the total tariff points of first-year first-degree full-time entrants who were aged under 21 at the start of their course, if the qualifications that they entered with could all be expressed using the tariff system. There must be more than seven students in any meaningful average and only students entering year one of a course (not a foundation year) with certain types of qualification are included. Departments that are dominated by mature entrants are not considered appropriate for this statistic because the age filter would only capture and represent the entry tariff of the minority of students.
Caveat: This measure seeks to approximate the aptitude of fellow students that a prospective student can anticipate. However, some institutions run access programmes that admit students on the basis that their potential aptitude is not represented by their lower tariff scores. Such institutions can expect to see lower average tariffs but higher value-added scores.
A Liberal Democrat press release last week (see here LD press notice 21 May 2015) drew attention to a parliamentary motion put down by the Convenor of the Parliament’s Finance Committee, who is a member of the governing party in Scotland.
This said (as at 24/5/15):
Motion S4M-13230: Kenneth Gibson, Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party, Date Lodged: 20/05/2015
Boost to Bursaries
That the Parliament welcomes the decision by the Scottish Government to increase student bursaries from £17,000 to £19,000 for households earning under £24,000; understands that this move has been warmly welcomed by NUS Scotland, whose president, Vonnie Sandlin, stated that the “announcement is a strong recognition of the importance of student support to improving fair access and a step forward in boosting the amount of money the poorest students have”, and believes that the Scottish Government’s decision is a positive step toward tackling educational inequality and in keeping with the proud Scottish tradition that education should be based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay.
Supported by: Adam Ingram, Stuart McMillan, Joan McAlpine, Graeme Dey, Christina McKelvie, Jean Urquhart, John Mason, David Torrance, Dennis Robertson, Bruce Crawford, Chic Brodie, Colin Beattie, Bill Kidd, Roderick Campbell, Stewart Maxwell, John Wilson, Rob Gibson, Mike MacKenzie, Nigel Don, Richard Lyle, Kevin Stewart, Angus MacDonald
One signatory (Stewart Maxwell) is Convenor of the Parliament’s Education Committee. The remaining signatories are mostly SNP backbenchers, other than one former SNP member now sitting as independent (Jean Urquhart). At least two (McAlpine and Urquhart) have lately been members of the Education Committee.
A £19,000 grant would leapfrog Scotland from bumping along the bottom of the European grant table into the global super-league, beating even Liechtenstein’s EU12,340.
But of course grant in Scotland is not going to be £19,000. It is rising from £1,750 to £1,825. The increase from £17,000 to £19,000 relates to the income threshold for the maximum grant entitlement, restoring (almost) a cut from £19,130 to £17,000 two years ago by the present government – welcome, certainly, but in the way that it’s welcome when someone stops standing on your toe.
People make mistakes. But it’s a certainty every single person involved in preparing and signing this motion could say straight away what the three year cost of the maximum fee charge is in England (£27,000). But not one – not one – of the 23 MSPs involved (or those acting on their behalves) looked at this text and spotted that the numbers were way out. That includes the convenors of the Scottish Parliament’s Finance and Education Committees. A group for whom fees could hardly be a more totemistic issue reveals a markedly superficial level of engagement with the detail of student funding.
The Lib Dems drew attention to the parliamentary motion on Thursday evening. This weekend, it remains on the Parliament site: the last two signatories above have added themselves since the version recorded in the press notice. If it remains unamended and un-withdrawn by its sponsors, and perhaps even still acquiring signatories, it will be a fascinating example of something other than a commitment to accuracy. It will though reflect better on the Parliament if the motion’s sponsors take a lead from the Cabinet Secretary, who this week corrected a statement that bursaries had not been cut.
[Update: the Cabinet Secretary wrote to Michael McMahon on 21 May, accepting the need to correct the record: see here.]
Invoking the spirit of Jim Callaghan (or more strictly Supertramp), on Wednesday the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning told the Scottish Parliament:
For the record, it is important to recognise that there has been no reduction in bursaries
The full text of her exchange with Michael McMahon MSP is at the foot of this post: his question drew on this FT piece.
A guest post on this site awaits any reader who can come up with a convincing argument for how the Minister’s statement can be justified. They will be expected to address that:
- the amount of bursary a student gets at any given income decreased, often substantially, between 2012-13 and 2013-14 (see table here: Scottish bursary year to year comparison)
- YSB entitlement had already fallen in real terms in the years up to 2012-13: see post here;
- total spending on all non-repayable student support, including those things technically described as bursary, fell substantially between 2012-13 and 2013-14, and also fell between 2006-07 and 2012-13 (table A9 here);
- total numbers of students claiming anything called a bursary fell between 2012-13 and 2013-14 and is now lower than at any point since the introduction of Independent Student Bursary (ISB – see below), while the total number getting any kind of non-repayable grant support is lower than at any point in the past decade (table A8 here).
The only trend-bucker is the SG’s introduction of Independent Student Bursary in 2010 – and even that only operated at its initial level for 3 years before being cut in 2013.
Even the fiercely pro-independence blog Wings Over Scotland has recently noted that bursaries”were substantially reduced in 2014 under austerity cuts” (in a post defensive of the SG’s record – A Difficulty With Facts, 7 April).
Ms Constance may have had in mind her plan to announce a small increase in bursary two days later (see here): that however only moderates the 2013 cuts, even ignoring that it hadn’t been announced at the point she was speaking and is not being back-dated.
Perhaps “no reduction” was meant to apply only to the past year or since the most recent change of Minister, invoking a sort of permanent Year Zero, in which governments cannot be held accountable for anything they did more than 12 months ago. Would-be guest bloggers are not permitted to submit this as an argument.
This is the sort of thing which might normally be expected to lead to a correction of the parliamentary record: see 1.2(c) of the Scottish Ministerial Code. Whether the record will be corrected, as it should be, remains to be seen. It’s hard to see in what other context the denial of the existence of £35m worth of cuts to public spending affecting poorer people would be regarded as unimportant.
The rest of Ms Constance’s response brings out how weak the government’s defensive lines remain here, with the rebuttal resting on:
- The current Scottish Labour Leader’s past support for tuition fees (deemed as always more relevant than the SNP’s past promise to restore grants and “dump” student debt).
- A comparison of the average final debt of Scottish students compared to the rest of the UK. The substantial difficulties with that comparison are explained in this post: in essence, these are figures reflecting policy pre-2013 and mask substantial variation round the average, according to income.
- The introduction of the minimum income guarantee, discussion of which elides loan and grant and which also, as this post shows, is benefitting far fewer students that the SG originally predicted, not least because many appear to be rejecting the large amount of loan required to achieve it.
- The increase in the total value of living cost support, which again blurs the distinction between loan and grant: the increase was generated entirely through additional loan.
Apart from the surprising assertion that bursaries have not been cut, these points are all familiar from earlier government responses. In other words, the Scottish Government continues to have no good answers when challenged specifically on its record on grant and the regressive effects of its decisions on student funding. There is of course a reason for that.
Full text of question and response discussed above
Is the cabinet secretary aware of the information that was published recently in the Financial Times that indicates that funding for student grants in Scotland has fallen as support for loans has risen and that Scotland now has the lowest rate of grant in western Europe; that, since 2007, spending on income-related student grant in Scotland has almost halved in real terms; and that Scotland is the only part of the UK where borrowing levels are highest among students from poor backgrounds? Does the cabinet secretary agree that the research shows that the net effect of Scottish Government policies is a resource transfer from lower-income households to higher-income ones? Does she believe that the findings of the research reflect a progressive agenda?
Mr McMahon and the Labour Party would have far more credibility on the issue if the leader of Labour had not spent all his career opposing free higher education and being a proponent of tuition fees.
For the record, it is important to recognise that there has been no reduction in bursaries and, when we compare average student loan debt in Scotland with that in the rest of the United Kingdom, the average for Scotland is £7,500, compared with £20,000 in England in particular. As for our offer to students, as I mentioned, we made a commitment to a minimum income guarantee. Our manifesto spoke of £7,000, and we have delivered a minimum income guarantee of £7,500. It is important also to recognise that there was a 23 per cent increase in the value of the average student support package for 2013-14.
The Scottish Government has just announced a small uplift in its grant for full-time HE students (by £125, for everyone up to £24,000) plus a restoration of the old threshold for maximum grant, back to £19,000 – it has been £17,000 for the past 2 years.
The adjustment to the rates after the formal announcement last month means that all SAAS’s printed material will now be overtaken. But web-based information is probably more used these days, so that’s not worth too much fuss. This is what erratum slips are for.
Still, it begs the question why this relatively modest change couldn’t have been sorted out in time. As this recent post argued, speculating on whether something like this might be on the cards, it’s very unusual to revisit the arrangements after they are announced – and they were already exceptionally late. This bursary increase is a small step back in the right direction. The threshold increase will help a group who lost out particularly badly in the 2013 cuts, who went from £2,640 grant to £1,000. They will now get £1,875. But at £19,000, grant will drop to £1,250. At £24,000, from £1,250 to £500. The losses since 2012 remain large.
[Update: Around £35 million has been cut from grant since 2012. These changes are likely to cost around £7 million, restoring just 20% of that loss.]
The announcement doesn’t make it clear whether the increase is for all full-time HE students or just those on YSB (whatever happened to information like that in the notes to editors?). If mature students are also to benefit, they will see their grant rise from £750 to £875 a year.
Update: the NUS response is here. Broadly positive, while stressing scope for more to be done.
The announcement comes in the same week as a PQ response from the Cabinet Secretary suggesting movement on another aspect of the 2013 reforms, about which I wrote earlier today: see here.
Angela Constance MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning announced this week that, in effect, a key assumption underlying the Scottish Government’s 2013 student funding reforms is under review.
STOP PRESS: 2 minutes after posting this, I saw today’s SG announcement that it plans to increase the maximum bursary by £125 and return the threshold to where it was before the Russell reforms took effect. See here.
London allowance: a casualty of “simplification”
Setting out his plans for 2013 onwards, Michael Russell MSP, Ms Constance’s predecessor, emphasised that this would be the “most straightforward package of student support in the UK”. That appears to have been based largely on two things.
- Entitlements which previously had fallen incrementally as income rose would now reduced in steps.
- In addition, there would now be a single scale for living cost support, wherever students lived or studied.
The second of these replaced the approach in use since at least 1962, and still found in other parts of the UK, where students are given less than the standard package if they live at home, and more if they go to study in London. In recent times, lower or higher loan has been used to create the difference, with grant unaffected by where students study or live.
Asked in December 2013 to explain the sudden decision to remove the additional London allowance (including for students mid-course), Mr Russell simply replied (S4W-18794 8 January 2014):
The Post 16 Education Reform Programme has simplified the student support system, making it easier for students to understand and maximise their entitlement. The new student support package introduced in 2013-14 standardised the level of living cost support irrespective of where in the UK a Scottish domiciled student studies.
Further details about London allowance provided in response to another PQ that day are included as a footnote to this post: on close reading, they suggest that some students may have seen an absolute fall in the value of their support.
Simplification revisited
A rather different response to much the same question was given on Tuesday of this week (emphasis added):
Ken Macintosh (Eastwood) (Scottish Labour): To ask the Scottish Government whether support for living costs available to Scottish domiciled students studying at a university in London are lower than that available to English domiciled students and, if so, for what reason.
Angela Constance: We introduced a new support package for all Scottish domiciled students in the academic year 2013 – 14. Every eligible Scottish domiciled student, whether they choose to study for free at a Scottish institution, or elsewhere in the UK, has the same eligibility for help with living costs. While we have simplified the system so that it provides an annual minimum income of £7,500 for all students with a family income of less than £17,000, it no longer features weighted living cost payments linked to the location of study. Accordingly, total living – cost support available to eligible Scottish domiciled students studying at university in London would be lower than that available to English domiciled students. However, as Mr Macintosh may well be aware, there are other university locations where there are issues with living costs. Mr Macintosh has raised an important issue and I intend to consider it more fully, including the numbers of Scottish domiciled students affected, the costs involved and I am happy to bring the issue back to the Chamber or to Mr Macintosh in due course.
And then on Wednesday (emphasis added again):
Ken Macintosh (Eastwood) (Scottish Labour): To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to review the levels of support for living costs available to Scottish domiciled students who study elsewhere in the UK.
Angela Constance: As already indicated, I intend to consider the issue more fully, including the numbers of Scottish domiciled students affected and the costs involved, and am happy to bring the issue back to the Chamber and to Mr Macintosh in due course. If Mr Macintosh has a particular constituent concern I would be happy to discuss it with him.
Back to the future (and beyond)?
The abolition of the London allowance deserves revisiting. Scots from low-to-middle income backgrounds who wish to study in London are now at a significant disadvantage in terms of upfront help with living costs – though putting the situation right simply by restoring a higher loan would leave low income Scots in London with some of the largest debt of any group in the UK, because since 2013 Scotland has provided so little student grant and these students are also of course subject to fees up to £9,000, for which their home jurisdiction provides no cash help (in contrast to their Welsh border-crossing counterparts, for example).
More intriguing is the reference to other places with high living costs. A system of differential support not just for London but elsewhere would not just reverse Michael Russell’s programme of simplification, it would go in completely the opposite direction, introducing new differentials into the system.
Other “simplifications” deserving re-examination
And where would such recogniton of variable costs leave the decision to offer the same living costs to those living at home and away? Scotland is not particularly generous for “away from home” students as it stands, including those at middle incomes (see here). If there’s a logic to restoring the London allowance on grounds of greater costs, so there is for rebalancing resources between those at home and those away. It affects far more people
Michael Russell defended his decisions here, too, in questions answered in January 2014 (S4W-19054 here). But in much the same way as above. Asked whether the Scottish Government still agreed with statements in an earlier consultation (Supporting a Smarter Scotland: A consultation on supporting learners in higher education, 2008) that students who stay away from home while at university
are likely to face greater financial pressures from a number of areas including rent and rising food and fuel costs
while
younger students staying in the parental home tended to have the lowest incomes and expenditure,
the best he could manage was:
The Scottish Government recognises the diversity in the circumstances of students. A key aim of the Post 16 Education Reform Programme is to simplify the main student support system whilst ensuring maximum benefit for all students,
and
The Scottish Government recognises the impact of increases in the cost of living for students. A key aim of the Post 16 Education Reform Programme is to simplify the main student support system whilst ensuring maximum benefit for all students.
And then there’s those stepped entitlements, which mean that as soon as income rises from £16,999 to £17,000, a young student loses £750 in grant; at £24,000, a further £500; and at £34,000, £500 in grant and £1000 in loan. Mature students face different but similar cliffs. Good public policy tends to avoid, rather than introduce, such sharp marginal effects.
Where next for the Russell legacy?
This recent post noted signs that the new Cabinet Secretary may not be entirely keen on the student support arrangements inherited from her predecessor.
His simplification agenda certainly always looked to include a fair dose of rough justice. It remains mysterious to this author why NUS Scotland said nothing about the situation of students going to London, accepted the stepped system with such enthusiasm, and settled for relatively limited increases in upfront support for many of those away from the parental home at low to middle incomes, while those living at home saw very substantial improvements. There is more discussion of these points in my February 2014 report.
The “simplified” model is certainly easier to describe on the SAAS website, as well as in press releases and ministerial speeches. But if the new minister thinks that the present balance between ease of presentation and providing what students need favours the first too much, that’s to be welcomed.
Yet the situation she is looking into is one introduced by her own government, less than 2 years ago. Any criticism or detailed scrutiny of the 2013 changes has met with a bullish reaction. Michael Russell once responded to a parliamentary motion seeking the restoration of grant cuts as a move to “destroy Scottish higher education”, for example: see pp 51-54 here. Ms Constance was a junior Minister working to him at the time, while the now First Minister was then powerfully positioned as deputy FM. It’s hard to avoid the impression that a system with obvious flaws was pushed through with more thought to headlines than its actual impact on all the individuals affected. One of its most fundamental problems – the regressive distribution of student debt – remains apparently undiscussable. Indeed, even yet Ministers have still to acknowledge that they cut student grants.
Signs of willingness to look again should be encouraged. But someone still in the government (not Glasgow’s new Professor of Culture and Governance) needs to admit and take responsibility for the full impact of its 2013 reforms.
Simples.
Footnote: the London Allowance in its last year
Kezia Dugdale (Lothian) (Scottish Labour):To ask the Scottish Government in what year additional support for Scottish students studying in London was last made available and what the (a) maximum value of additional support and (b) total amount paid was that year. (S4W-18795)Michael Russell:Additional support was last made available to students studying in London in 2012 -13. (a) The maximum support for students studying a 30 week course in London was £6,690. This was £1120 higher than students studying a 30 week course elsewhere. Courses longer than 30 weeks in London attracted additional support of £109 per week. This was £24 higher than the additional support for a course elsewhere. (b) It is not possible to identify the total amount of additional support awarded in 2012-13 to students studying in London. (8 January 2014)
This piece from January by the Director of Education and Skills of the OECD looks mainly at the system used in other parts of the UK (he refers to the UK as a single system, but the comments only make sense applied to the approach in England, and possibly also those in Wales and NI).
The piece includes a brief reference to the role of grant:
But even the best loan system is often not sufficient. There is ample evidence that youth from low income families or from families with poorly educated parents, but also youth who just don’t have good information on the benefits of tertiary education, underestimate the net benefits of tertiary education. That’s why it has paid off for the UK to complement the loan scheme with means-tested grants or tuition waivers for vulnerable groups.
The assertion that students from backgrounds without experience of HE may be reluctant to borrow appears to be borne out in Scotland, where a substantial minority of those low income students taking out a grant borrow nothing and limit themselves to the grant, a maximum of £1,750 a year and usually less: see here.
The piece more generally makes an argument for systems in which fees are charged but then met up-front by state-backed loans with income-contingent repayments, arguing that there is no direct relationship between access and the existence or not of fee charges:
OECD data show absolutely no cross-country relationship between the level of tuition countries charge and the participation of disadvantaged youth in tertiary education. In fact, social mobility is worse in Germany which pays for all university education through the public purse than it is in the UK.
The author concludes that
There is lots the UK can do to further improve its approach to financing universities. For a start, it can do better with aligning course offerings with societal demand. I also worry that the loan repayment parameters mean many middle income workers – such as teachers, health professionals, public sector workers – will end up paying more for their education than better earners such as lawyers and bankers. But among all available approaches, the UK offers still the most scalable and sustainable approach to university finance.
A piece here on the Economics of HE site, by Nicholas Barr on Labour’s proposal to reduce the fee cap, which challenges it as progressive, argues for making the loan scheme more self-funding by reducing the repayment theshold, for increasing the public investment in teaching and in pre-HE activities, and making more loan available for post-grad, part-time and non-HE students.
It’s thought-provoking material. An omission, in this author’s view, is any discussion of the total amount of debt students might end up with under these proposals (particularly if the aim is to have system where most loan is repaid). Do we have a view as a society about how much debt a person can reasonably be expected to accumulate, to obtain certain levels of education? That debate’s been absent in the UK and that’s been to the detriment of low income students in Scotland, especially mature ones, as well as those in other parts of the UK. Also worth noticing is the assumption that the way to improve collection rates is to reduce the threshold rather than (say) adopt the Australian model – which has a higher threshold, but once the threshold is crossed, collects more (and increases the rate of collection as income rises – see here: it’s roughly AUS$2 to £1).
In a twist on the dominant rhetoric in Scotland,Barr argues (emphasis added):
Private benefits should generally be paid for by the beneficiary. However, students are credit constrained and hence generally cannot afford to pay fees. The purpose of student loans is to make higher education free for students, enabling them to pay for their private benefits when they can afford it, i.e. as graduates rather than students. In the language of economics, loans are a device for consumption smoothing. Saying the same thing in more political terms, with a well-designed loan, access to university is determined by people’s ability to learn, not their ability to pay.
His conclusion:
Lowering the fees cap might have limited merit as a political quid pro quo for reducing the loan repayment threshold, but on its own uses scarce resources in a way that is both inefficient and regressive.
England has the right strategy for financing higher education, but with the wrong parameters. To restore the progressive 2006 strategy:
-
The threshold level of income at which loan repayments start should be reduced in real terms;
-
Spending on improving access should be rebalanced, with more emphasis on spending earlier in the system;
-
The balance between taxpayer support for teaching and tuition fees should over time be adjusted by restoring an element of teaching grant.
On 27 April, the new Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Angela Constance MSP, made what is (as far as I can tell) her first official statement on student living cost support in higher education since her appointment last year. Answering a written PQ asking when the 2015-16 student support rates would be published, she said (S4W-25134 here):
The 2015-16 funding guide, which includes details of student support rates, became available on the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) website on 2 April 2015. The SAAS events team has distributed the guide at events since 26 March 2015.
The Scottish Government is committed to free tuition and providing financial support for students’ living costs. Ministers will always take the opportunity (including in-year) to further improve student support when that is affordable.
A change of tone
There’s a clear change of tone from her predecessor, whose response to any question on student support could usually be relied on to (a) make comparisons with England and (b) invoke the questionable concept of “best in the UK”. This is a much more straightforward approach to answering questions, which should be welcomed. It’s interesting for several further reasons. First:
The Scottish Government is committed to … providing financial support for students’ living costs.
I should hope so. So has been every major party in the UK for over 50 years. It’s such a basic statement it seems almost odd to bother making it. Indeed, doing so brings home how weak the Scottish government’s record is on living costs and how little they can actually claim, stripped of the distracting cross-border comparisons on fees and hard-to-substantiate comparative claims used previously.
The current SG does have one claim it could have straightforwardly made, that it has substantially increased the value of living cost support. But it has done so only by injecting large amounts of Barnett-consequential loan into the system, while withdrawing grant – and in doing so, for those living away from home, who are the majority of students and most in need of help, the SG has still only raised Scottish levels of support up to something comparable with England or Wales (and often still compares unfavourably with one or both of those, especially for those at middle incomes away from home, for whom Scottish living cost support is still pretty poor). Perhaps the new minister is uneasy about claiming much here: that would be to her credit.
A hint?
Ministers will always take the opportunity (including in-year) to further improve student support when that is affordable. (emphasis added)
This is interesting, also. There’s no obvious reason to include the highlighted section. Indeed, it would be very unusual (possibly unprecedented?) to introduce a new grant or increase support rates for higher education mid-year. Most mid-year adjustments simply top up discretionary funds, of which there are still some in HE, but they are limited. So trailing the possibility of mid-year improvements stands out. Why do this? Is the government hoping, or wanting to encourage others to hope, that while grants have been frozen, again, at their reduced level, it will still find some way in the next few months to revisit a policy (grant cuts) which it still has found no words to defend, nearly three years since it was first agreed.
[Update: on 15 May, a small increase in grants for 2015-16 was indeed announced: see here.]
How comfortable is the new minister with the current arrangements?
Further signs that the new minister may not be entirely comfortable with the situation she has inherited lie in the very long delay in publishing this year’s rates (six months later than usual, and indeed as late as they could be, given applications were due to start this month), the absence of any associated government press release, and that the PQ above was (oddly) first subject to a “holding response” on its due date for answer, just last week – when the figures had already been out for three weeks.
Without wanting to over-do the kremlinology, it’s hard to avoid noticing all these delays and silences, the surprising reference above to in-year change, and the abandonment of the more gung-ho presentational style which has dominated the government’s handling of student living cost funding since 2012. It doesn’t seem too much to hope that Angela Constance’s own background and experience might mean that she is more alert to arguments about unfair long-term debt distribution than her predecessor, whose background appears to have been rather different.
Exactly how the government plans to use the £21m held back from the SFC’s budget for higher education institutions for “post 16 flexibility” remains unannounced (though some of it may be underwriting the plans to extend EMAs). Watch this space.
Footnote (1)
Worth noticing too is:
when that is affordable
because it confirms something obvious but avoided by many who are prepared to turn a blind eye to grant cuts, while fee spending remains protected. The wording confirms that spending on grant is subject to an affordability test: no Scottish Government minister or spokesperson has ever suggested tuition fee support labours under that constraint. The position has been clear for a long time from the actual decision-making, but now is officially confirmed: grants are a lower priority for spending than fees.
Footnote (2)
The answer notes that SAAS was handing out the 2015-16 guide several days before the site was updated and a month before any sort of formal confirmation of the rates was available (in this PQ, absent a press release). The information must have been with the printers for at least few days before that. It’s really not good public information practice that this information was made public first to those who happened to be at certain SAAS events and then by those who happened across the SAAS website, rather than in a proper announcement as soon as possible after the decision had been made.
The Scottish Government’s Widening Access Commission has been announced and its chair appointed, but its remit and timetable are not yet public.
What might the SG do here about student support?
The Scottish Government is under some pressure on its handling of student living cost funding – and it has become clear over time that it has no good lines to explain or defend its decision to cut grants in 2013, and to design into its system higher levels of student debt at lower incomes. References to grant cuts are routinely appearing in the press as a fact needing no further explanation (as here) and even the accomplished Nicola Sturgeon struggles to defend her party’s record in government on student funding (as one report of a recent leaders’ debate shows). Senior members of the Scottish Government repeatedly fail to recognise, let alone acknowledge, and much less justify, the effect of their policies.
The SNP is the only major party whose 2015 manifesto is completely silent on the issue of student living costs in Scotland: it does not even discuss what position it might take on Labour’s proposals to increase grant in England. Fees aside, the debate is arguably running away from them here.
What do governments do when they have a difficult higher education funding issue? Recent experience elsewhere in the UK suggests they give it to an independent commission which – ideally – is not due to report until after the next election (Dearing over 1997; Browne over 2010; and Diamond in Wales now).
Responsibility for recent decisions and their effects can then be set aside, questions about the future put off and manifestos left vague: the commission is looking at it and it would be wrong to pre-empt their findings or appear to influence their deliberations.
Perhaps it will soon be Scotland’s turn to try out this gambit.
Scotland’s not had a review of student funding for a long time and it would, in fairness, be odd to have an access commission which didn’t look at all at that issue. Equally, though, any commission would not presumably be allowed to look at the access case for investing so much of the available funding in 100% tuition fee support regardless of family income, rather than other things (whether grants or access and support programmes).
There’s a further difficulty with sweeping the debate about grant into the access commission.
It would almost certainly be hard to prove that students are put off by the higher debt due to Scotland’s minimal use of grant, though evidence that a substantial minority of low income students in Scotland seek to get by just on their very low grant should ring alarm bells. There is also some research into the impact of switching some support from loan to grant in England in 2004 which suggests that improved participation rates. But pinning down an unarguable, precise relationship between grant and access could still be difficult.
The most basic and unarguable problem with the current low levels of Scottish grant (and relatively low repayment threshold) is not that it’s contributing to Scotland’s average record on improving access, but that it is stacking up a long-term regressive financial impact within the graduate population, whereby people who started poorer will see more of their future earnings taken by the state than those who started from better-off backgrounds, perpetuating inherited differences in wealth down the generations.
Of course it would make sense for the commission to look at funding – but that shouldn’t prevent the SG being expected to give a better account than it yet has of the decisions it has already made and which have now affected three years’ worth of students – all those in the system from 2013-14 onwards, and which will probably at least a fourth cohort, in 2016-17. It could be argued that the low priority the SG has given grants over a longer period – rates were frozen from 2009 – has affected many more.
Unless the access commission is specifically asked to worry not only about who gets into higher education in the first place but also how the long-term costs associated with participation are distributed, it might conclude that grant is less of a priority for further investment than other activities (raising attainment in poorly performing schools, for example). That wouldn’t though be a vindication of the Scottish government’s decision to design a system of student funding which reinforces long-term financial inequalities across the generations or an argument for leaving our exceptionally low system of grant untouched.
In the light of some recent PQ answers, this post revisits the only substantial point of rebuttal the Scottish Government has offered in response to evidence of a regressive distribution of student debt in Scotland, dating from last year in a statement to the Scottish Parliament by the then Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning.
The claim
On 29 April last year, the then Cabinet Secretary, Michael Russell MSP was asked a question at the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee about the regressive distribution of student debt in Scotland. The relevant part of the Official Report is included at the end of this post.
He made make a number of contestable observations (there was some precedent for this – as before, I wrote to the Committee with my comments on the Minister’s observations and the letter is available on their website, here). Most of the points could be straightforwardly addressed, but there was one substantial point where it was possible the government had access to unpublished information which might demonstrate regressive effects on paper were not translating into such effects in practice: at this point no data had yet been published for how the new arrangements brought in in 2013-14 were working in practice.
The Minister implied that it was a problem that the calculation of regressive effects “assume[d] that the accrual of debt loan uptake in 2014-15 will be the maximum of each individual Scottish student’s eligibility, which is not normally the case” [emphasis added].
What point was being made?
One reading of the point would be that not all students take out all their loan each year. That’s certainly true: for years, around 30% of students haven’t borrowed anything at all. But if that was what was meant, it was an odd criticism. The analysis of 2014-15 figures looked specifically at the different levels of debt generated by the government’s package of support at different incomes assuming students take out their full entitlement to loan and grant – the same assumption the Scottish government itself routinely uses when referring to individual entitlements. This assumption underpinned its much-publicised changes to student support in 2013-14 and its estimates of the likely numbers receiving support under the new arrangements contained in evidence the SG subsequently provided to the Committee.
Further, as it is evident from the official statistics that students from low incomes are disproportionately likely to be borrowers, the existence of non-borrowing is in fact a substantial source of further regressive effects in itself, over and above the underlying design of the system. Far from the existence of non-borrowing being an argument against the existence of regressive effects, the opposite is true.
That suggested the Minister might be seeking to make another point, which could in theory have more substance – that individual students don’t normally take out their whole loan entitlement. That certainly could mean a less regressive the pattern of debt distribution in practice than predicted – although only if low income students were particularly likely to borrow less, and it would not alter the underlying regressive design of the system on paper.
How”normal” is it for students to take out their whole loan?
That was potentially a more substantial point, so I wanted to look further at how normal it was for students to take out their maximum loan. That couldn’t be tested directly from the full official statistics. So I submitted an FoI request to the Scottish Government, asking for sight of the data on which the Minister’s claim was based.
The response came that “We have completed our search for this information. The Scottish Government holds no tailored analysis of data linked directly to the specific comments you highlight, referenced at column 4087, on the transcript of the Education and Culture Committee’s meeting of 29 April 2014. However, you may find it useful to note that the Higher Education Student Support in Scotland (2012-13) publication, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2013/10/1120 , shows 60% of undergraduate students receiving any form of support from SAAS were authorised for a loan.” [emphasis added]
There was no new relevant evidence. The reference to overall borrowing rates reinforced that borrowing in general was more “normal” than not. Indeed, the 60% is obtained by including EU students in the sample, although they cannot take out loans: for Scottish-domiciled students only, the figure that year was just under 70%. That the government didn’t feel this figure was enough to count as “tailored analysis of data linked directly to the specific comments you highlight” tends to confirm that the initial claim was intended to be about something more than the fact that loan take-up was less than 100%.
I let the Committee know, but otherwise left it there.
Recently however PQ answers (see here) have shown not only that the majority of low income students borrow (as we already knew), but also that most borrowers take out their whole entitlement. Among those with low enough incomes to be entitled to grant, whose borrowing was my main concern, 75% take out their full loan entitlement (70% of young students and 85% of mature students): full figures shown in table at end.
Indeed, it turns out that in September 2012 the Minister had already celebrated the large numbers of low income students receiving the MIG and therefore taking out their full loan: see here. I’d missed that until recently.
These figures don’t tell us what’s normal for those at higher incomes. But from the numbers we have, it’s arithmetically inevitable that they are less likely to take out their whole (lower) loan, reinforcing the regressive effects of the Scottish system in practice.
Why this matters
Mr Russell’s claim in April last year remains the nearest thing to a substantial government critique of the evidence gathered by this author about the way student debt is distributed in Scotland.
Depending on what was meant, it is either a puzzling criticism that the theoretical part of my analysis uses the same assumption as the government has made at important moments (and in doing so under-plays the degree to which debt is unequally distributed in practice), or else it is directly at odds with the fact that it is “normally the case” that that low income students do borrow the maximum of their individual entitlement.
In an earlier context, Mr Russell had emphasised that those involved in policy debates should expect to have their contributions “scrutinised, considered, and even disagreed with”. Leaving aside that that comment sits a little uncomfortably with his resistance at Committee a few months later to any challenge to the government line on any aspect of student funding (see below), scrutiny, consideration and disagreement are certainly justified here.
Extract from Official Report 29 April 2014, col 4087-88.
Liam McArthur MSP: … I would welcome his observations on comments made by Lucy Hunter Blackburn, the former head of education in the Scottish Government, who has said that with the increasing move from grants to loans in Scotland, “In Scotland, uniquely in the UK, graduates who started from poorer backgrounds are now expected to leave university with a higher debt, and therefore face a higher de facto tax on their future earnings”…
| Young Student Bursary | Independent Student Bursary | Combined | |
| Total claimants | 32930 | 17400 | 50330 |
| of which taking full loan entitlement | 23065 | 14780 | 37845 |
| 70% | 85% | 75% |
This earlier post considered some of the questions which might be raised by the SNP voting at Westminster in favour of the new £6,000 fee level in England, as proposed by Labour.
The SNP manifesto now appears to commit the party to doing this – it states “We will guarantee the continuation of free university education in Scotland and support the reduction of tuition fees across the UK”.
By committing themselves at this stage to supporting a fee decrease (rather than, say, leaving open the option of abstaining on the basis they are against fees, full stop) the SNP appears to have taken the issue out of any post-election bargaining – unless that commitment should be read as in some way contingent on Labour’s willingness more generally to work with the SNP.
Some commentators have described the party’s manifesto, launched yesterday, as being aimed largely at persuading Labour supporters in England to put pressure on their party to work with the SNP. In the memorable words of Stephen Daisley, “The whole manifesto reads like the Guardian letters page printed on glossier paper”. In that case, the main purpose of the commitment on supporting lower fees would be encouraging a positive view of the SNP among those on the left opposed to higher fees in England.
SNP support for Labour here can be predicted to come under critical scrutiny. Some of the opposition – from the right-wing press and Russell Group universities – will be unlikely to bother the SNP – indeed criticism from those quarters will tend to reinforce the party’s ability to present itself as radical and progressive.
However, some of the criticism of Labour policy as a wrong priority for public spending, and in itself more regressive than progressive, in an echo of some of the criticisms of free tuition in Scotland, has come from more politically neutral sources such as the Social Market Foundation and the IFS (with which the SNP admittedly already has a scratchy relationship). The SNP may find its positioning as a progressive party on questions of student funding under more intense and high-profile scrutiny south of the border than it is used to in Scotland.
The SNP have not committed themselves to supporting Labour’s more unambiguously progressive grant increase. Given that they have been prepared to cut grants in Scotland, SNP support for higher grant in England is perhaps less certain (and potentially more politically embarrassing). A vote on this may not be needed, however, and given their domestic record on grants, it is not surprising that the party does not refer to this point explicitly in its manifesto.
Voting for fees of £6,000 will of course have the ironic effect of meaning that the SNP’s new Westminster group will in practice have voted in favour of a higher fee regime than many of the Labour MPs they replaced, who last voted in favour of fees at £3,000. That can in theory be dismissed as a petty criticism – but some of those exposed to earlier the SNP lines of attack on student funding may feel justified in making the point, for the reasons suggested in the earlier post.
As that post noted, the SNP can make a good case for voting in favour of a fee reduction, on the basis of how entangled the systems are: a reduction in fees would be likely to generate a positive Barnett consequential for Scotland, would reduce costs for Scots going to England and enable fees to be lowered for rUK students in Scotland.
But if SNP votes become critical to achieving lower fees, as they may if both the Tories and Lib Dems voted against the change, stand by for a replay, but this time in reverse, of earlier objections from some opponents of fee increases to Scottish MPs voting in favour of those. Certainly, the Conservatives seem likely to push the legitimacy of SNP votes on this topic as an extension of their current election approach, described by Ed Milliband as deliberately stoking English nationalism. How far that would be a concern to the SNP would presumably depend on how far they regarded growing English nationalism as helping or hindering their wider aims. It’s clearly a potential headache for Labour.
One way or another, the issue of tuition fees seems likely to remain defining for devolution in the UK.
Now that the grant levels for 2015-16 are available, it’s possible to write this post, as a case study of how the force of government rebuttal can be in inverse proportion to its substance. It’s a tale of the risks of shining light in unwanted places, but also the rewards of persistence.
The draft budget for 2014-15
In the autumn of 2013, the Scottish government published its budget plans for the next two years. This included a below-inflation rise in the Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) budget line covering student grants and fees between 2013-14 and 2014-15, and then a small cash fall in 2015-16, meaning a modest real terms fall over the period (figures and links here).
There wasn’t any explanation in the budget of what these figures were expected to mean in practice for student funding, but coming on top of a large cut to grants in 2013, the implications looked worth exploring, so I wrote a piece for The Scotsman (here) analysing the numbers, intended to contribute to the scrutiny of the draft budget over the subsequent few months.
The piece noted the absence of further detail from government, and that there were in theory three “obvious” ways a government committed to maintaining free tuition might manage a cash-flat SAAS budget: not increasing grant in line with inflation; reducing spending on the remaining supplementary grants, of which the largest is Disabled Students Allowance; or reducing student numbers. But I gave various reasons why the last of these would be “challenging” and noted that there was “limited room for manoeuvre” on the second, concluding “freezing student grant levels therefore seems likely to be a strong contender for managing the pressure here”. I also noted that the value of the fee payment made to universities by SAAS might continue to be frozen, reducing the real-terms value of teaching funding per student.
And so it has turned out. As of a few days ago, we now know that grant rates will have been frozen in cash terms over the whole period from 2013-14 to 2015-16; and that the SAAS tuition fee payment remains unchanged over the period (see here). In addition, which I didn’t predict, the funding assigned to universities has been raided to prop up the SAAS budget (see below) and in 2015-16 the SFC’s teaching unit of resource has also been held at same cash value as in 2014-15 (para 7 here), in line with ministerial guidance to the Scottish Funding Council in November 2014 (see here).
None of this would be all that interesting at this remove, if it hadn’t been for what happened next.
The Scottish Government response
Asked about my article at the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee meeting on 8 October 2013, the then Cabinet Secretary, Michael Russell MSP, speaking with the advantage of parliamentary privilege, went on the offensive. His response was:
… I found the article very curious, and I will tell you why….…The options that Lucy Hunter gave for dealing with what she called a “continued squeeze on student funding in higher education”— which actually does not exist — were an end to the practice of increasing grants by at least the rate of inflation, reducing other grants, such as disabled students allowance, or a planned reduction in student numbers. If you forgive me, convener, I want to address all of those, because her position on all of them was plain wrong, unfortunately.… Any suggestion that the answer to supposed funding pressures would be to squeeze [the DSA budget] would be nonsensical, because it would not make any difference at all.There is no planned reduction in student numbers … To use the phrase a planned reduction is utterly wrong. To base an entire article on that is simply not on. It has clearly misled some people, and Lucy Hunter should probably apologise to those people whom she has misled. That is not happening. Therefore, the thesis is wrong. I am happy to provide the information, but Lucy Hunter’s article is based on an entirely false premise, and that needs to be said.(In full at col 2995-6 here: the response did not – despite the promise at the start – deal with plans for grant levels, at no point referred to teaching funding, but did include much more material than summarised here on the government record and plans on student numbers.)
Strikingly, Mr Russell did not take issue so much with what I had said, as with something I hadn’t – which was that the Scottish government was definitely planning to reduce student numbers. Noticeably (and it turns out for good reason) he did not challenge my conclusion that a freeze in grant values and teaching funding seemed likely.
Calling something a misleading piece, which is nonsensical and plain wrong, based on an entirely false premise and for which I should apologise, is pretty strong stuff and I wrote to the Committee at the time, with my take on Mr Russell’s criticisms: that letter is available on the Committee’s website, here. I also sent Mr Russell a more detailed deconstruction of his statements and suggested he might like to apologise. His reply is here: Russell Nov 2013. The tone was more restrained, but he repeated that “I do not agree with any of the options that you listed”.
Yet, far from being plain wrong, the original article turns out to have predicted accurately what the SAAS budget numbers would mean in practice: a cash freeze in grant rates and the tuition fee subsidy per student. The likely consequences of government funding decisions for SAAS may not have been at all apparent to the Minister and – presuming his statements reflected the advice he was receiving – the entire government machine, but they were pretty obvious to one individual armed with nothing more than an internet connection and a working knowledge of the higher education funding system.
Indeed, the Funding Council recently clarified that it will be transferring £14m from its budget to SAAS in 2015-16 to cover the fee cost to the agency of extra students (para 21 here). An increase in student numbers, something announced by Mr Russell to the Committee as part of his argument with the article, turns out – completely predictably – to have been impossible to fund from within the planned cash-flat budget for SAAS presented to parliament.
Scrutinising government
My letter to Mr Russell argued that:
If independent commentators in my position become concerned that they will experience criticism which is unfair and potentially damaging, particularly in contexts where they will have no right of reply or redress, then, as I hope you would acknowledge, that is likely to deter them from contributing and inhibit public debate .
Mr Russell’s response to me had said:
I am sorry that you are unhappy with the evidence I provided to the committee relating to your published article. I do not think, however, that in disagreeing with what you said I am either deterring you or anybody else from debating student support or any other issue. Rather, I hope you will agree that the very nature of debate means that it will inevitably involve different viewpoints and participants who offer a view can reasonably expect their view to be scrutinised, considered, and even disagreed with.
Indeed so. A reasonable, considered response would have been a much more enlightening in October 2013. I would also welcome engagement by the Scottish Government with the real substance and detail of the evidence and arguments about grant cuts and the distribution of student debt detailed elsewhere on this site. Sadly, that has yet to materialise: offered the chance to discuss that issue more specifically some months later at committee, the same Minister once again went off-piste (a story for another day).
Individuals vs the state
There is a lot of information out there about government activity of all sorts, easily available for free and much of it under-scrutinised, at a time when the number of specialist correspondents in the media is declining. We are likely to rely increasingly on individuals examining this information and sharing their findings, to bring out important questions about the activities of the state.
Though Mr Russell is no longer in government, his observation that
participants who offer a view can reasonably expect their view to be scrutinised, considered, and even disagreed with
remains valid, for those wielding state power even more than those examining how that power is used.
Despite the best efforts of government, gradually the pressure on student grants in Scotland is becoming an established fact of public debate, as yesterday’s Herald editorial, one in last week’s Guardian and various other articles listed here, demonstrate. Happily, in the end it turns out that criticisms which can’t be backed up, however floridly expressed, sometimes have less impact than persistence and a solid evidence base.
Footnote
The strength of the reaction to mention of Disabled Student Allowance at Commitee and in Mr Russell’s letter to me, when I had only referred to this more or less in passing in the original article, stimulated me to look further at that. It turned out that the Scottish Government was in fact mid-way through a review of the funding for disabled students (which was not mentioned to the Committee or Mr Russell’s letter). While not explicitly about reducing spending, the proposals implied at least the possibility of a less purely demand-led system in that future: I wrote more about that here. This review since appears to have been shelved. The closer look at DSA also showed spending on that had already fallen by 20% in real terms over the past two years.
Adventures In Evidence 