The S6 problem?

In recent weeks the situations at Dundee, Robert Gordon and Edinburgh Universities have once again shone a spotlight on the unsustainable nature of higher education funding in Scotland. As a result, different policy suggestions have been proposed from different quarters, including Reform Scotland’s call for a graduate payment.

Others, such as Russell Findlay (leader of the Scottish Conservatives), have raised the issue of whether Scottish universities need any longer to offer a 4-year degree, especially when the norm elsewhere in the UK is three year courses.

While there may be merit in examining this option, we would urge policy makers to ensure that any review of the 4 year degree is linked to discussion about what happens in S6 at school.

In Scotland, pupils who are likely to go on to university tend to sit their main exams at the end of S5, not in their final year of school. Throughout the period since at least the late-1940s, that has often led to questions over how to make the most effective use of the final year of schooling.  While this question is usually cast as a problem for schools it was actually created by the universities. It stems from the initial introduction of the 4-year degree in the late-nineteenth century, which itself happened in the face of  reluctance to modernise the old degree structure in ways that would have been more consistent with Scottish traditions than with those of Oxford and Cambridge.  

The essence of the problem arose when the Scottish universities had to allow specialisation by students in order to enable them to compete with the graduates of Oxford, Cambridge and London, and increasingly also of the newish English universities in the large industrial cities. One of the main arenas of competition was in the new entrance assessments for the UK (and imperial) civil service.

Two options were available. One was to create Honours degrees, but these could not be fitted into the 3 years of the previous degree structure. The other would have been to have followed what became the typical North American pattern, of 3 years of general education and then 1-2 years of specialisation. That option was in fact widely discussed in Scotland, especially by people who resisted what they called anglicisation, but the pressures not to deviate so fundamentally from the English model were too great. 

But that then left an anomaly. Entry to the first year had to be at the level of the Highers (after they were inaugurated in 1888), and so had to be lower than what was required at Oxford and Cambridge. As a result, Honours degrees had to be 4 years. The old general degree was re-named the Ordinary degree, which continued to last for 3 years.

So the legacy created by S5 entry was the Ordinary degree. At first, and until after the second world war, Honours were taken only by a minority, and even as late as 1960 two thirds took the Ordinary degree. Until that time, there were no options of advanced learning for school pupils beyond Higher. In other words, of the relatively small number of young Scots going to university until then, quite a number finished with one year less education than their English contemporaries: 7 at primary, 5 at secondary, and 3 at university, compared to 6 plus 7 plus 3 in England. 

Now the reverse is true. The Ordinary Degree collapsed in the 1980s. The standard route through the Scottish education system for an academic pupil then became 7 years in primary, 6 in secondary and a 4 year degree: 17 in all. In England the standard route still takes 16 years.  Of course not everyone follows the standard route but the public purse is funding an extra year of education in Scotland.

While in England A-Levels are largely sat in the final year of school, the legacy of this history is that, in Scotland, academically inclined pupils  take their highest-stakes exams at the end of S5. Nevertheless, S6 has increasingly been put to better use than it was in the past. It offers a chance to re-take Highers, to sit additional Highers,  to pursue more advance study through Advanced Highers, or to develop vocational options. Because this present day 6th year does probably provide a better choice than in the past, both academic and vocational, more students are encouraged to stay on.  So the school problem of S6, though still present, is not the main issue. The main issue is the essentially wasted year for students who proceed from S6 to a 4-year degree. We are no nearer to resolving this now than we have ever been in the past eight decades. The greatest danger is that trying to solve it would undermine what has been achieved in schools, for example by trying to make S6 into a university-preparation year, or a surrogate for university first year. If the problem is going to be fixed, the responsibility lies solely with the universities, not the schools.

Lindsay Paterson is Professor Emeritus of Education Policy at the University of Edinburgh and Keir Bloomer is a former director of education. Both are members of the Commission on School Reform