{"id":3124,"date":"2016-04-17T06:39:20","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T06:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=3124"},"modified":"2025-12-27T13:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T13:17:11","slug":"student-funding-what-the-parties-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2016\/04\/student-funding-what-the-parties-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Student funding: what the parties say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>The parties\u2019 proposals on student funding are starting to emerge, some in manifestos, some as trails.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Manifestos are available for the Greens, Lib Dems, Conservatives, Women\u2019s Equality Party and UKIP. Still to come of the parties represented in the last session at Holyrood are the SNP and Labour, though both have trailed elements of their proposals, Labour in most detail.&nbsp; The other party getting some coverage whose manifesto is not out yet (I think) is RISE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m about to start looking at what each party is saying about student funding and access to HE.&nbsp; As I\u2019m not sure how quickly I\u2019ll get round to that, for readers interested in all this here\u2019s a table setting out the issues I\u2019ll be looking for, as a sign of what sort of priorities and understanding each party brings to the debate.&nbsp; It\u2019s a bit clunky on-line, so it&#8217;s available as a&nbsp;document:&nbsp;<a href=\"httpss:\/\/adventuresinevidence.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/04\/policy-table-sp-elections-2016.pdf\">Policy table SP elections 2016<\/a>&nbsp;(PDF).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The table explains why each item is included, but also includes my best effort at the argument against. Mostly I agree with the arguments in favour (I think that\u2019s allowed, on my own blog).&nbsp; The counter-arguments have been drawn from things said by Ministers, other discussions I\u2019ve seen or taken part in and occasionally I have added a point which I\u2019ve not heard made but seems an obvious one. In a few cases, I can\u2019t identify a good counter-argument (other than cost, and not even that always).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The table constitutes, I suppose, a sort of manifesto of my own for student support: it mainly summarises issues picked up somewhere on this site. Some of these points are too detailed to make it into any manifesto but are still included in the list just in case. Also, there are various things here that would be good to do in principle, but in reality choices always need to be made.&nbsp; Clearly no party could therefore realistically be expected to pick up more than a few of these things \u2013 but their choices should be revealing, when set against this list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This post first appeared on the author&#8217;s own site.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scotland&#8217;s leading expert on HE funding sets out what the parties say about student support in the run-up to the May 5 elections to the parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[37,51],"class_list":["post-3124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-scottish-education","tag-young-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18075,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions\/18075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}