A comment article on the Scottish Government social and educational priorities relating to pupil attainment and addressing issues of child poverty and disadvantage is now published on the Social Theory Applied site.
A new article: Inequalities of access to higher education: The role of policy and ‘powerful soft practices’ for more equal childhoods and university chances in Scotland addresses the recent speech to Scottish educationists by the Minister for Education in the Scottish Government, Angela Constance MSP, at the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change.
The comment article by Joan Forbes (Reader in Education, University of Aberdeen) and Elspeth McCartney (Reader in Speech and Language Therapy, University of Strathclyde) is one in a series of outputs from a Scottish Universities Insight Institute funded Equalities 2015 knowledge exchange programme: Children and young people’s experiences and views of poverty and inequalities: Policy and practice implications. Earlier project outputs include a series of policy papers on: Poverty and children’s education; Poverty and children’s health and wellbeing; Poverty and children’s access to services and social participation; and Poverty and children’s rights, civic and political engagement.
The new article reviews the ways in which Scottish Government policy on ‘closing the gap’ on pupils’ academic attainment effects particular schooling ‘pipelines’ for students’ post-school destinations, including for university entrance. Key messages are that intergenerational exclusion from higher education derived from poverty and inequity may need to be more broadly tackled than hitherto; and that the concerted cultivation of ‘powerful soft practices’ may contribute to the realization of more equal childhoods for young Scots.