Councillor Paul Johnston

On the day that Scottish Exam results drop through the letterboxes of expecting students, there remains the unresolved debate about the future of higher education that underlies all the comments that will flow forth from the great and good.

My concerns that commentators will rubbish the results again, as they do when any increase in pass rates are announced.  The requirements of any qualification change with time.  It does not mean it gets easier – it can, but there is no evidence that it actually has.  But there is evidence it has changed in another way.

Change in the the topics covered by exams have always happened.  How many doing Maths now would be able to handle a slide rule?  In my day, it was part of the exam.  Now students would no know what a slide rule was.

For all those who are tempted to suggest the utter nonsense of advising students not to go to further Education but study things that industry bosses want now, could I enter the thought that we are really teaching people for occupations in technologies and systems that have not even been invented yet.  Such is the challenge of the future.

Congratulations to all students in your results.  I just hope that the generation currently making decisions about your futures, your higher education places and the very sustainability of the Country, will not indulge in the short term thinking of ‘government spending’.  I hope they will have the courage for the investment in peoples’ futures and not our selfish present.