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Sceptical Scot

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Lucy Hunter Blackburn

About Lucy Hunter Blackburn

Lucy Hunter Blackburn, a former civil servant and freelance researcher, is now a postgraduate researcher at the University of Edinburgh.

Baby boxes: a political case study

December 21, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn 2 Comments

‘I think MSPs should make a fuss if the budget materials provided to them are not factually correct, as a matter of principle, regardless of the policy or scale.  But on this one they didn’t last year, as far as I know, so the government may be banking on a further free pass’.

The case for more Scottish student grants

November 26, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn Leave a Comment

‘I worry also about nest-egg building by those from high incomes, as a new form of hidden advantage, because of the low interest rate on student loans here. We could apply higher interest to loans to those from better-off households (but we won’t)….’

Dumping student debt? On the poor…

November 7, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn 1 Comment

Wonk of the year Lucy: ‘The signs are that the wrong people are being made to pay for current higher education policy in Scotland, in skewed debt or lost support, restricted opportunities and squeezed funding overall. As far as I can recall, no-one in Scottish university senior management has ever argued with me about this in public, nor got in touch to tell me privately that they disagree’.

Brutality of small decisions: student grants

November 1, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn Leave a Comment

‘every time ministers highlight the increase in the threshold in 2016-17, they are doing so on the back of these dramatic losses for two or three thousand young people from low-income homes every year from 2013-14 to 2015-16.  I’d not be so proud of that’.

Baby boxes: who’s in charge of delivery?

August 7, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn 1 Comment

‘It’s now also clear that standing up to the political impulse to go national, fast, would have enabled the costs to be pinned down better before the long-term commitment was made…

Widening access: a modest proposal

August 5, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn 1 Comment

‘Most access initiatives target the people identified as disadvantaged. We remain less comfortable curtailing the effects of privilege.’

Student debt and grants in Scotland: an update

June 1, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn Leave a Comment

“The Scottish system is not debt-free in the absence of fees: indeed Scottish students are borrowing a substantial amount as a group each year. The Scottish approach relies heavily on loans to cover the state’s role in providing low-income students, in particular, with living cost support. Grants are now so low that those from the lowest incomes are taking on the most of that living cost debt.”

Let’s debate different models for student fees and grants

May 15, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn Leave a Comment

“there is no realistic chance that the Scottish Government is going to reduce its reliance on student loans to underwrite the higher education system. £500m is roughly the annual cost of the whole FE system, or 1p on the basic rate of income tax” Scotland’s leading expert on another model – and more – of funding HE.

The SG’s secret SpAds

March 10, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn Leave a Comment

“The Scottish Government recently declared itself a “global leading light in the campaign for more open and accessible government”. Going backwards in terms of openness and accessibility in relation to special advisers suggests that there’s still a bit of work to do making good that commitment.”

Blimey: can Scotland meet its widening access targets?

February 3, 2017 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn 1 Comment

New data from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) suggests the scale of change needed to meet the Scottish Government’s targets for widening access to university – a key pledge of Nicola Sturgeon’s first full term – may be too much. The 2021 targets Government’s targets come from last year’s report by the Commission on Widening Access, […]

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