Those urging tuition fees claim it’s “realism”. In truth, it’s a retreat that would punish the poorest and weaken Scotland’s future workforce, says Roz Foyer

We seem a fair distance away from the halcyon days of “education, education, education.”

A new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has revealed that, in the next Parliament, Scottish Government ministers face an unenviable task in balancing the books.

The impending ‘Barnett squeeze’, as the authors of the report framed it, whereby the funding advantage Scotland receives, relative to England, through the Barnett formula is decreasing. Coupled with an anticipated general slowdown in UK Government public sector funding, this ‘Barnett Squeeze’ seems far more akin to a straitjacket than a squeeze.

This has, predictably, reignited the conversation on what Scotland can and can’t afford to pay for in the current climate, with free university tuition now firmly within the crosshairs for cutting.

Stop the politics — the Epstein scandal is about survivors, not men

Storm clouds gather over offshore wind as developers warn of crisis

Why Trump’s America is not an ally of the UK

Promises of ‘jam tomorrow’ won’t fix Scotland’s public services

Education funding isn’t fair game for execution. It’s intrinsic to the social contract that we have all signed via the Scottish rate of income tax that comes out of our wages every month.

That’s not to say that the higher education sector doesn’t face unmitigated financial pressures – it does.

We aren’t averse to delivering praise when praise is due. When the Finance Secretary was on her feet last month delivering the Scottish Budget to the nation, a prospectus we labelled “electioneering on steroids”, we made the explicit comment to praise the Scottish Government for their “commitment to free tuition in higher education”.

I’m not usually in the business of praising the status quo but the wolves are at the door and there are those who want to see our education sector thrown open to the mercy of the market. It’s down to us – those who value the benefits of education based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay – to defend it.

And we have been defending it with passion. Last week alone, unions throughout higher education have been both balloting and taking industrial action to protect the future of the sector.

University and College Union (UCU) members at both the University of Aberdeen and Heriot-Watt University backed strike action and actions short of strike over moves by the institutions over budget cuts,  including refusing to rule out compulsory redundancies to staff. This follows similar industrial action called by the EIS at Edinburgh Napier University over staff cuts and the quality of academic provision at the institution being eroded.

The easy and, frankly, lazy response is that to ensure a viable, thriving higher education sector, it’s the students that’ll have to foot the bill.

The solutions won’t be found in creating barriers to attainment and foisting debt on to our young people which they may never be able to pay back.

If you’re from a working-class background and perhaps lack the advantages afforded from family wealth, and have decided that university is the route for you, I’ll bet you £9000 worth of tuition fees that the rate of working class kids going to university would plummet if you told them they’d leave with upwards of £70,000 worth of debt.

Long gone is the notion that student debt isn’t “real” debt. Why would anyone from within Scotland’s poorest communities subject themselves to such levels of suffocating anxiety? The calls from those espousing the view that it’s, somehow, acceptable for pupils from the Calton or Castlemilk to face such levels of debt for simply trying to better themselves via higher education embody a detachment from reality.

As we’re seeing for students, especially those on the Plan 2 repayment scheme for their student loans in England, the interest payment alone dwarves whatever monthly repayments is taken out their wage.

That’s hundreds of pounds - £300, £400, £500 - per month just going to service interest payments on debt that will never fully be repaid, with workers just waiting on the thirty-year amnesty clause to kick it before it’s wiped out.

That’s resource that’s far better kept in the pockets of workers to fight off the cost-of-living crisis and spend in their shops, towns and villages, revitalising our high-streets and promoting economic growth. 

If there are those heeding the call of the IFS and still believing that this scenario – one of student debt and pulling up the drawbridge to education for working class people – is the way to go, then we’re in trouble.

Because insurmountable debt lumped on to students is the reality of the marketisation of our education system. That’s the cold hard facts. We cannot allow market forces to dictate the life chances of our young people.

This discussion on tuition fees occurs in the middle of a staffing crisis in our public services. Are we really in a position to price out would be nurses, teachers, social workers – the workers who make up the backbone of our public services – because some believe giving them tuition free access to world-class institutions is too high a price to pay?

Market forces and private sector interests don’t just impact higher education – it’s at every level. Teachers at Craigclowan School near Perth, who are already the lowest paid of all teachers in Scotland, have been on strike over the past four months to defend their pension interests. Craigclowan is, as you may have guessed, a fee-paying private school. It's owned by a company whose London-based owners refuse to allow the management of the school to negotiate with the EIS to resolve the dispute. In the face of such intransigence, workers at Craigclowan are likely to re-ballot  in order to continue the fight.

Meanwhile in the public sector, the EIS is balloting its members on industrial action as part of a year-long dispute over what amounts to massive understaffing of our schools- excessive workload for the teachers who have jobs while thousands of others don't have permanent or any teaching jobs. Past manifesto promises to reduce workload by employing thousands more teachers and cutting class contact time, scandalously, haven't been kept by government and employers.

Our solidarity is with the teachers and lecturers and all other workers working day in and day out to deliver quality education for Scotland's pupils and students.

But that can only be achieved if we’re prepared to front the money that embeds world-class standards. 

The warnings from the IFS are clear, as is the solution. Investment in education, education, education, not cuts, is the outcome we should be striving towards. 

Roz Foyer is general secretary of the STUC

© Herald Scotland