INTRODUCTION

This chapter examines the educational outcomes of pupils from Muslim families in Scotland and the forms of capital mobilised by their parents to achieve social mobility through education. Over recent decades, the experiences of Muslims in Scotland and the rest of the UK have been very mixed. On the one hand, Muslims have sometimes been seen as a security threat and a challenge to social cohesion (Commission on Integration and Cohesion, 2007). On the other hand, the UK Government has taken the lead across Europe in passing equality legislation relating to protected characteristics, including race and religion/belief. Systems have also been put in place for gathering and analysing administrative data to investigate the implementation of equality policies. Despite these efforts, across the UK there is still some variation in the type and quality of administrative data that is available, with Scotland having less data on ethnicity and religion than England due to low numbers in specific groups and the lack of individual pupil data. Across Scotland, there has been very little research on the social experiences and outcomes of Muslims, although Peter Hopkins has investigated the social identity of young Muslim men in Scotland (Hopkins, 2004), and Hussain and Miller (2006) have explored social attitudes on Anglophobia and Islamophobia. This paper, drawing on research funded by the Al Waleed Centre at the University of Edinburgh, attempts to address some of the gaps in the literature by exploring the educational outcomes of Muslim pupils in Scotland and the attitudes to education within Muslim families. The need for education, and especially for educational qualifications, has become increasingly important in recent years for all members of society, irrespective of their background. This is in part due to the growth of the knowledge economy and a changing labour market, but also because it is seen by governments as a means to promote social cohesion. The Scottish National Performance Framework recognises its importance, as the framework includes aims to increase the number of Scottish graduates as well as the number of school leavers in positive destinations.

The questions considered in this chapter are the following: What are the educational outcomes of Muslim pupils in Scotland? How do Muslim parents in Scotland mobilise various forms of capital to influence their children's educational outcomes? What is the relationship between economic and ethno-religious capital in influencing the educational outcomesand experiences of Muslim pupils in Scotland?

INTRODUCTION

Despite the massification of higher education from the 1980s onwards, the Dearing and Garrick Reports published in 1997 expressed concerns over the under-representation in higher education of certain social groups (National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, 1997a, 1997b). This prompted the development of a range of measures to encourage wider participation, including work with school pupils from non-traditional backgrounds. In Scotland, better use of articulation between further and higher education was advocated in the Garrick Report as one way of promoting higher levels of university participation (National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, 1997b). Although widening participation emerged as an issue somewhat later across Europe it is now promoted by the social dimension in the Bologna Process (see, for example, Eurydice, 2014).

This chapter examines strategies to promote widening access across the four nations of the UK, with the main focus on Scotland and England. A central question is whether, in the light of devolution, widening access is an area characterised by a greater degree of convergence or divergence (Gallacher and Raffe, 2012). In line with the goals of the Bologna Process, it is also interesting to consider whether within the EU there is evidence of higher education convergence across EU member states and other countries within the European Higher Education Area. These issues are explored using administrative data from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), Eurostat and the Eurostudent survey. In addition, we also draw on data from interviews with key informants which were conducted as part of the ESRC project. The following questions are addressed:

1. • What are the main strategies for promoting widening access to higher education by non-traditional students and what monitoring is in place in different parts of the UK? Has devolution led to greater convergence or divergence across the UK in the field of widening access?

2. • What measures are in place in Europe to promote widening access and how is progress monitored?

3. • What evidence is there of an increase in students from non-traditional backgrounds in the UK, Sweden and Germany and what similarities and differences are evident across these three member states?

INTRODUCTION

Globally over the last forty years the number of students who leave their home country to study abroad has grown considerably. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in 1975, 0.8 million students moved abroad to study; by 2012, this number had grown to 4.5 million (OECD, 2014). The reasons for migrating to study are often described in terms of ‘push’ factors relating to poorer higher education opportunities in the student's home country, and ‘pull’ factors, relating to attractive features of provision in the host country (Altbach, 2004). Traditionally, countries in the English-speaking world, such as the UK, USA and Australia, have been major recipients of international students, but these countries are now facing increasing competition, as universities vie for advantage in a global higher education market (Marginson, 2008; de Wit et al., 2013). International students are considered valuable not only to the host country, but also to individual universities since they boost institutional finance as well as generating jobs in the local economy and creating a more diverse local culture.

Using data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) as well as key informant interviews, this chapter examines the relative importance of international students in the four countries of the UK. The issue of migrant students has become intertwined with the hot political topic of immigration more generally, and we examine how this has played out in different contexts. Finally, we present a case study of Chinese students studying mainly at an ancient Scottish university to shed light on their reasons for enrolling at this institution and their experiences of living and studying in Scotland. Gallacher and Raffe (2012) suggested that the internationalisation of higher education was an area of policy convergence across the UK, and in the conclusion we explore the extent to which this is still the case. It should be noted that throughout this chapter the term ‘international student’ or ‘overseas student’ is used to refer to a non-EU student, since those from the EU study under the same terms and conditions as home students.

Survey methodology

In order to obtain a diverse range of adult learners in our sample, and to guarantee a sufficient number of adult learners at the lowest course levels, each national sample was stratified by ISCED level of the current course, with four subsets of respondents:

• • ISCED 1+2 – primary and lower secondary/basic level 250

• • ISCED 3 – upper secondary level250

• • ISCED 4 – post secondary (non tertiary) level250

• • ISCED 5 – tertiary level 250.

Although this sample is not representative of the entire population of adult learners in the formal education system, it allows us to analyse similarities and differences by educational level of the current course. Especially in the Eastern European countries, it was difficult to find 250 respondents at ISCED 1 and 2 levels as the educational provision for early school leavers who want to complete secondary school usually start at ISCED 3 level. Moreover, the aim was to include lowqualified adults in the ISCED 1 and 2 courses, but particularly in Flanders, and also partly in the UK, more highly educated adults were also found on lower level courses. In Flanders, this is because of high enrolments of learners with an ISCED 5 background on arts programmes that span ISCED levels 1 to 4. The database was weighted to take the original sampling structure of 4×250 into account. Each country in the analysis counts 250 adult learners at ISCED 1-2 courses, 250 at ISCED 3 courses, 250 at ISCED 4 courses and 250 at ISCED 5 courses.

In order to exclude students from initial tertiary education, adult learners were not defined on the basis of age, but rather narrowly as people who have left fulltime formal initial education – e.g. to enter the labour market – and who, at some point, decide to participate in formal education again. The time span between leaving full-time formal education and re-entering must be at least two years. Respondents thus had to be adult returners.

The definition of adult education used in this chapter is based on the final report of the task force on the Adult Education Survey (Eurostat, 2007):