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By Alasdair Macdonald

Within the pre-school and school sector, funding per capita allocations increased as age groups increased. So, allocations to pre-school organisations were less than those for primary and, these, in turn, were less than the allocations to secondary. And, within secondary, these were even greater for senior secondaries compared to junior secondaries and for students in Fifth and Sixth Years, the two years after the school leaving age of 16.

Students opting to continue beyond the statutory minimum leaving were disproportionately from families in the higher socioeconomic deciles.

These allocations revealed an underlying principle about the purpose of school education. There are other principles involved and, in the main, the principles are about the good of society. But, a further question is – whose society?

The principle relates to what a tutor of mine called ‘social control’ or, more euphemistically, ‘socialization’. Not all of this is bad and is about fostering community. However, it is also about ‘selection’, about choosing those who will carry out the jobs which are deemed more important, and those who will become ‘leaders’.

Selection, it goes without saying, applied only to the schools attended by the children of the great majority of the public, not to the private schools. Those whose children attended private schools were the ‘leaders’ and they were ensuring that their offspring would be in the same privileged positions. However, in an economy that was growing from the time of the Industrial Revolution (and earlier) this increasing complexity required recruitment of ‘able’ children from the ranks of the hoi polloi and the lower middle classes. These were the children who ‘passed their Qualy’ and went into secondary education, some of whom were permitted to continue beyond the minimum leaving age to study for Highers. A few of these attained sufficient Highers to enter Higher Education.

There was thus a ‘winnowing out’. There was also a social class aspect. Children for economically poorer families were less likely to pass the Qualy, and, for family financial reasons, left in greater numbers at the minimum leaving age, even though many were capable of progressing further academically.

This explains the disparity in funding levels of preschool and primary compared to secondary education and the disparity between funding of junior secondaries and senior secondaries and between funding for the earlier and later years of senior secondaries. Even at post school, further education (attended by many of the able working class children attended who had had to leave school at the minimum leaving age for economic reasons) was funded less generously than higher education.

With the ending of the Qualy and selection in Scotland, the introduction of comprehensive secondary schools, assistance to enable more children to continue beyond the minimum leaving age, the gradual blurring of the curricular differences between further and higher education, and the creation of more routes to continue education beyond school, social mobility became more common.

These are all, in my view, GOOD THINGS. However, despite that there are still funding disparities and, as has been the case in England since the 1990s, a vocal opposition to these changes which have widened access, because children of the hoi polloi were entering the higher echelons of the economy. They were competing successfully with the products of private schools.

Scotland has to a great extent resisted these pressures. And that the reason why the right wing media continually distort data to give the impression that Scottish education is failing.

Alasdair rarely comments at length but when he does, it's always tremendously interesting and thought-provoking.

Help Talking-up Scotland keep going

Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going

Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421