NUS Scotland set to release new report detailing the serious crisis facing further and higher education in Scotland

Later this week, NUS Scotland is set to publish the first in its new Broken System series of reports.

The Broke Students, Broken System report will highlight the serious crisis facing Scotland’s higher and further education system and will be launched in an online event on Thursday February 1 at 1pm, featuring speakers from across the student movement and education sector – including NUS Scotland President Ellie Gomersall and UCU Scotland President Jeanette Findlay.

The report details that while the Covid pandemic and cost-of-living crisis have worsened and exposed the cracks in Scotland’s education system, these cracks go far further and deeper – resulting from years of underfunding and marketisation.

While praising some of the achievements in education reform in the 25^th year of the Scottish Parliament, the report concludes that progress has stalled and that students are being failed by a broken system. Five key areas in which reform is urgently required are identified: the funding model, student finance, housing, transport, and mental health.

This report, setting out the faults in the current system, is the first of three in NUS Scotland’s Broken System series. The following two reports later this year will outline international best practice and policy ideas from countries comparable to Scotland, and then present a roadmap towards a new, better system – built by Scotland’s students from the ground up.

Commenting, NUS Scotland President Ellie Gomersall said:

“Our universities and colleges, hit with years’ worth of cumulative real terms cuts, are facing even greater cuts this year. Students still don’t have enough money in our pockets, leaving large numbers stuck in a cycle of poverty.

While NUS Scotland has successfully fought for free undergraduate tuition for Scottish-domiciled students, and we won significant increases to student finance, the current system is still failing students.

25 years on from the reestablishment of the Scottish Parliament, we must now embrace bold, radical solutions for an education system that is genuinely free, accessible, lifelong, and sustainable.

Education is one of the best ways of tackling poverty and inequality – but in order to succeed, our focus should be on building an education system that works for people, not profit. This report is the beginning of that.

This is not the time for fiddling around the edges, but for transformation – and the student movement is determined to lead the way.”