The 2024 Scottish Labour Party Conference last week was the largest ever and set the scene for a major advance in Scotland by 2026 to match the likelihood of a sweeping swing to Labour across the UK this year. The mood of a packed conference was one of determination to ruthlessly press home their advantage and not be complacent in any way. But the economic challenges are huge and daunting for any incoming government. Winning will be based upon trust to steer the economy in favour of working people. But the issue of how to fairly fund students and universities was again ducked. It had been relegated to a very small and distant elephant in the room.
Neither Scottish Labour Leader, Anas Sarwar or UK Labour leader Keir Starmer addressed higher education in their speeches to a packed hall. Despite it being one of the major challenges facing both leaders. There were very many young people amongst the delegates and members and they might feel short changed. The only concession to education came from Sarwar who noted that,
“Our education system, once lauded as one of the greatest in the world, is now declining after 16 years of SNP neglect”.
The five missions.
The so called ‘Five Missions’ from last year, economic growth, clean energy, the NHS, safe streets, and opportunity, still dominate the Labour campaign. But the cost of each is now constraining genuine aspirations. A good example is clean energy. Ed Miliband showed up to deliver an inspiring speech on ‘Clean Energy’ and the plan to base the publicly owned Great British Energy company in Scotland. He stressed that the aim is still to achieve complete clean power by 2030. Yet questions remain about the cost and the extent to which oil and gas will persist. Also, the role of education is still standing in the wings waiting to make an entry. At the same conference last year, it was a very large elephant in the room. Now it appears to be much smaller and further away.
The elephant has not gone away.
Last year TEFS reported that the funding of universities and students was a very big elephant on the room at the Scottish Labour Conference in Edinburgh. It was also there again at the UK Labour Confence in Liverpool. But with much tightened security around the large Glasgow venue this year, it was only a very small elephant that managed to sneak in. It seemed very distant as the challenge of funding students and universities was overshadowed and avoided. Yet this is surely at the core of fair access and social mobility and cannot be ignored for much longer.
Graduate tax and national insurance
TEFS has proposed in several past reports (last time in November 2023) that a fair system to fund universities would be to divide the cost between the main beneficiaries and stakeholders. The current system of placing the full burden on students is unreasonable. Making the least wealthy graduate pay more for longer from this academic year onwards crossed a red line. The other challenge will be to reconcile the Scottish stance of ‘no student fees’ with the rest of the UK. The TEFS approach would eliminate the problem at one stroke since no UK student would pay fees at all. This does leave the problem of making a transition from loans to taxation for existing graduates seem daunting. But it is not insurmountable. Indeed, the likelihood of paying less through lower payments as a national insurance levy for graduates would be welcomed.
Accepting that stakeholders and beneficiaries are students, employers and society in general means that all three must bear the cost. The simplest way to do this would be via a ‘graduate tax’. Even simpler would be to levy an added graduate contribution onto national insurance that graduate employees and employers pay. The additional costs would be covered by the taxpayer to reflect the value to the overall economy and society. Numbers may have to be capped and priority disciplines identified. But there is no rule to say this cannot be generous.
Education at the conference.
The issue of education and equality for Labour is largely sitting under the umbrella of ‘Opportunity’. This is reasonable but tends to sideline the immense role of higher education in how it is presented. This is unfortunate and creates a gap in how Labour plans to fuel better access and funding for the sector. The conference reinforced this with little refence to education throughout and with nothing on universities.
The last morning saw a debate on the change young people need. The emphasis was on early years and schools despite it being billed as including further and higher education. Only two motions were submitted. One was on funding of further education and the astounding discrimination against women arising from cuts. The other was on inclusive education in schools as we move towards a digital era.
On the fringes and the ‘diamond students’.
Input about higher education was confined to sessions organised by three universities. One by the University of St Andrews on brain health research and another by the University of Dundee on saving lives and driving economic growth concentrated on their research strengths. However, one run by Robert Gordon University and the University Alliance on the role of professional and technical universities did strike a chord in the discussion. One comment from the chair summed up the the goal of most ‘high tariff’ universities with the quote of the conference.
“They are only interested in the diamond students”,
going onto explain these were the ones from well off backgrounds who do not require any added support to succeed.
Sadly, it summed up my experience of teaching in a ‘high tariff’ university. Universities that offer greater added value by bearing the time and cost of taking on less advantaged students have a more difficult task. An incoming Labour government might do well to offer more to bolster these vital efforts.
The author, Mike Larkin, retired from Queen’s University Belfast after 37 years teaching Microbiology, Biochemistry and Genetics. He was not a ‘diamond student’.