§ Mrs. Bainasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the high failure rate of students with Scottish certificate of education qualifications in first year courses at Scottish universities; and if he will hold consultations with the Scottish universities to discover what steps can be taken to gear first year courses more closely to the academic attainment of students with Scottish certificate of education qualifications.
§ Mr. McElhone:University courses are the responsibility of the universities themselves; the relation between these courses and SCE qualifications is one of the matters which my Department discusses at its regular meetings with the Scottish Univer- 198W sities Council on Entrance. I understand that the council's testing of entrants project has already made a substantial contribution to identifying areas of difficulty, that in some cases SCE syllabuses have been modified in consequence, and that the results of the project to date have also been drawn to the attention of the universities and the schools.