Our maths input today was on data and statistics. It was mainly based on health care and hospital statistics, but our lecturer (Dr Ellie Hothersall, from the university’s medical school), also brought up the topic of University attainment in terms of students from the least deprived areas of Scotland, typically being the ones to attend University. She gave her view from a medical school angle, telling us that historically student doctors were only white males, and that over the late 20th century females were being accepted to medical school more and more. However what the University of Dundee are now trying to do, and have been for several years, is accept students that aren’t necessarily from wealthy middle class families, which is what most people are guilty of picturing when we think of a stereotypical doctor. To me, this makes a lot of sense. People of all ethnic backgrounds and cultures go to see doctors, and I personally feel more at ease when I see a doctor that I feel I can relate to and vice versa. Therefore everyone should have the opportunity to be able to relate to the medical profession, and not see doctors as a completely alien and elitist group of people.

I wanted to think about this further and consider that Universities across Scotland are taking this approach when admitting Students. The Scottish Government have recently published that ‘A Record Number of Students from Deprived Areas Get in to University’. The article states that the number of acceptances for students from the 20% most deprived areas is up by 13% in 2017. According to John Swinney (the deputy first minister) “our goal is that everyone with the natural talent and ability has the chance to go to university”. So even if you are from a very deprived area of Scotland, if you get the grades and have that natural ability, you should get to go to University. Which I think is fair. However according to a BBC News article from May 2016, Young Scots are four times less likely to go to University if they are from a disadvantaged area, than those from wealthy backgrounds.

Why is this?

Is it just pot luck or chance that depending on the family you are born into and the area you are brought up in, that determines the quality of your future education?

From my perspective, every member of my family has attended university. Grandparents, mum and dad, aunts and uncles…. therefore university for me was inevitable. Ellie said the same about her family, and that she expects her two young children to attend university and hadn’t really considered any other options. Perhaps this is the initial step that young people take when considering university for their future. Maybe those who have grown up with family members not having gone to university don’t consider university as readily. So is it just down to chance? If you are ‘lucky’ enough to be born in a wealthy area, into a well-off family, you are already leaps and bounds ahead of those who weren’t given that same opportunity?

An article by Steve Hargreaves called ‘Making it into the Middle Class’ looks at some statistics. Of people born into lower income households, few will ever make it into the middle class, according to a recent study from Pew Charitable Trust. A small percentage makes it into the high earners bracket, which is shown clearly in the diagram below. It shows that 70% of the people from lower income households remain that way, and still only 26% rose to middle class.

The report the goes on to say that even those that moved on to become slightly higher income households shared various traits in common such as, being college graduates, coming from two income families, being white and not experiencing not unemployment.

I then went on to the Pew Research Centre website and found an online calculator that was able to tell me if I was middle class in Western Europe or not.It asked me for my nationality, my annual household income and the number of family members I have living in that house. Even doing this very simple online calculation can determine what class you supposedly fall into and therefore, according to society, decide how successful your future looks.

Looking at statistics in this way has made me want to use more statistics in my learning and understanding of topics in the future. I feel that using graphs and charts that contain data is a very effective and visual way of summing up larger pieces of information and making them easier to understand. Having Ellie come to speak to us about the data and statistics they collect in the medical school setting gave us a different perspective than if we were to hear from one of our own lecturers from education. This emphasises Liping Ma’s fundamental principle of mathematics – multiple perspectives. She effectively showed us how statistics are used and related it to something which we, as a class, could all relate to – exams! I feel that that is what teaching mathematical concepts is all about, making sure you can relate ideas and topics from everyday life and link it to somewhat ‘scary’ things like statistics and data analysis.

References

• BBC News (2016) Scots Students Face ‘Shocking’ University Access Gap. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-36392857
• Hargreaves, S. (2013) Making it into the Middle Class. Available at: http://economy.money.cnn.com/2013/11/13/making-it-into-the-middle-class/
• Pew Research Centre (2017) Are You Middle Class in Western Europe? Available at: http://www.pewglobal.org/interactives/european-middle-class-calculator/
• Scottish Government (2017) Record Number of Students from Deprived Areas Get in to University. Available at: https://news.gov.scot/news/record-number-of-students-from-deprived-areas-get-in-to-university