§ Mr. KirkwoodTo ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on his plans to encourage wider access to further and higher education in Scotland.
§ Mr. Michael ForsythThe White Paper "Higher Education: Meeting the Challenge" (Cm. 114, April 1987) stated the Government's objective to increase participation rates in higher education and invited institutions to respond accordingly. We need to increase participation514W both by encouraging more young people to stay on at school and gain entrance qualifications for higher education and by making it easier for those who leave school early to progress to higher education through the further education system.
With the prospect of a marked decline over the next few years in the size of the under-21 age group, many higher education institutions in Scotland have begun to seek to increase participation by those without the normal entrance qualifications for higher education courses, including mature students. Recent figures suggest that about 6,000 entrants a year, or about one quarter of the total entrants to higher education in Scotland, are aged over 21.
My Department is encouraging closer collaboration between the further and the higher education sectors, particularly directed at identifying best practice and encouraging students capable of progression to higher education who may have left school without normal entrance qualifications. The growing use of the Scotvec national certificate will help in this.
Progression from further to higher education will be made easier by better articulated courses at certificate, diploma and degree level, to allow credits to be earned and accumulated at one level and transferred and recognised at the next. This will also make part-time study easier for those in employment who wish to progress to degree level. It will also make it easier to for those who fail to complete a course at a higher level to leave with some recognised qualification at a lower level.