Kyle was always a laid-back kind of guy, easy going, never had to work at enjoying life. He was bright but nothing in school outside football held his interest. He had little thought of further or higher education and drifted into a job as a salesman. Despite himself he was a success, earning good money, smiled at by managers but he was watching his mates from school progress through university to become the sort of people who told him what to do. He began to feel both that he'd missed out on something, and maybe also that he had more to offer the world than an easy manner and the gift of the gab. But how to step sideways from a well-defined, if limited career path?
Later in life Tommy told people, "my school was like a battleground. Nobody should have been allowed to go to that school." He escaped as soon as he could and started as an apprentice in an engineering works. Promotion to Supervisor took only a few years and he moved to a nicer part of town with the wife and kids he'd acquired in the meantime. He enjoyed learning from the graduate engineers he worked beside but he also began to realise they weren't any brighter than him. One even seemed pretty dim, despite the letters after his name. Sadly the goodwill of your immediate bosses is no protection from the winds of globalisation and Tommy found himself out of a steady job before his 30th birthday. Although his skills and his contacts kept him in short-term contract work he began to wonder if this was the moment to go back to education. But how to get there?
These aren't real people but their stories are like those I meet on our part-time, mature student Access programme. I could have invented lots more: people whose schooling was disrupted by family break-up, women chased by teachers into Arts degrees even although they loved science, people who suffered from depression in late teens... I imagine most of us would agree there should be ways back into education for such folk, both so that they can grow and develop as people and so that the economy can benefit from the full employment of their abilities. Adult routes to university do exist: university Access programmes like ours; the Scottish Wider Access Programme Access courses and many other possibilities in the Further Education Colleges; the Open University. But current "widening participation" policy in Scotland focuses almost entirely on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), and specifically on measures to encourage participation from the bottom 40% of postcodes as classified in the SIMD; so-called MD40. Are our institutions rewarded for helping Gwen? Only if she now lives in a MD40 postcode area. If she does, the fact that she went to a good school would be irrelevant. Tommy? He shouldn't have moved to a better part of town. Kyle? Depends where he lives.
Obviously our Access course still operates and we could be useful to all of these people. Some of the other possibilities might also work for them. The Part-Time Fee Grant is a great help to Scottish adults coming back to study and eligibility depends on income, not where they happen to live. But the lack of recognition in policy of the complexities of adult lives, and in particular the simple fact that adults don't have to stay where they were born, casts a shadow over this kind of work. If times get really tough, institutions will focus exclusively on the activities they're rewarded for. Of course we should start with identifiable, disadvantaged communities, but we need to think more broadly than MD40 if our answer to Gwen is not to become, "you went to a good school. You had your chance. Should have kept your knickers on."
