International Education Strategy

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bailey]

As a fellow west midlands MP, my hon. Friend will have shared the experience of the enormous investment that is coming to the region from Indian entrepreneurs who were educated in this country. That is a hard economic benefit that has accrued.

To get back to the point I was making, we have only achieved £23 billion of the benefit that was targeted way back in 2013.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important case. Has he seen the figures I have seen, which suggest that the number of students coming from India in the last year for which there is data—2017-18—is about half what it was in 2010-11?

[Mr Bailey]

I will touch on that when I talk about the impact the visa regime has had.

The revised target in the strategy is to have 600,000 students contributing a net £35 billion to the economy by 2030. That would require a growth rate of something like 4% per annum. Whatever the headline figures, that seems an unambitious target. It is lower than we achieved between 2013 and 2018, which in itself was a long way behind our major competitors. The target would perpetuate a system where we are lagging behind in building market share in the very important world market in education.

There is constant repetition within the strategy about the opportunities that we will have once we have left the EU. In all my dealings on this issue, I have never heard anyone say that we are losing our market share because of the EU. I have heard plenty of other explanations, but I do not want our discussion to become hostage to a more partisan debate on our membership of the EU. Whether we are in or out, it is vital that we take the right steps now to maximise the contribution of international students to our economy.

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[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I very much support the arguments that my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) made. I share his worry about our falling market share with respect to the overseas students we support in the UK. I want to speak about one problem that has particularly hit our performance.

In 2011, the Home Office gave a licence to the American firm ETS to deliver the TOEIC—test of English for international communication—in the UK. Over the following three years, more than 58,000 overseas students took that test to demonstrate that they spoke good enough English to study here. In February 2014, “Panorama” exposed the significant scale of cheating at TOEIC centres that took place with the connivance of their proprietors.

ETS responded by undertaking an analysis of its recordings of all 58,000 tests over the three years. It concluded that 33,725 candidates had definitely cheated and 22,694 had probably cheated, which adds up to virtually all of them. As a result of the allegations, more than 35,000 of the students lost their visas and many were thrown off their courses midway through. Appeals were not permitted in the UK, and the students involved lost all the fees that they had paid.

Five years later, the plight of many is dire. Last night in the Attlee Suite, the film-maker Tim Langford premièred “Inquisition”, a deeply disturbing and compelling short film about the plight of five students who are still in the UK. There is a moving article in The Guardian today about the plight of three students who gave up and left the UK and who are now in a terrible situation in their home countries. Those who are still here are not allowed to study or work. Many of them depend on support from friends. Some had invested their family’s life savings in obtaining a British degree and are now destitute, have no qualifications, and have apparently been found guilty of cheating by the UK authorities.

It is now becoming clear that many—probably most—of those who lost their visas in that way did not cheat. The National Audit Office has recognised the problem and is due to report on the scandal on Friday. I welcome the Home Secretary’s recent announcement that after the report is published he will make an oral statement in the House about proposals to address what happened. However, although the 58,000 students who sat the test were from a great number of countries around the world, the largest numbers came from the Indian subcontinent: 6,000 from Bangladesh, 8,000 from India, 10,000 from Pakistan, 1,000 from Nepal and 1,000 from Sri Lanka. Unsurprisingly, in the light of how we have treated those students, there has been a very big fall in the number of people who have come from those countries since the TOEIC scandal: 48.5% fewer started their first year of tertiary education here in 2017-18 than in 2010-11.

One very disappointing aspect of what happened is that students who were thrown off their courses and plunged into crisis received very little support from their universities. At the film première last night, a UK university immigration adviser said that the university that he worked for at the time had forbidden him to assist the students affected. It will take a lot of work to repair the damage that the scandal has caused to the reputation of UK higher education.

Where students are able to regain their visas, perhaps following a statement from the Home Secretary in the next couple of weeks, does the Minister agree that their former universities need to help them? In particular, does he agree that it would be wholly unacceptable for the universities to require those students to start their courses and pay their fees all over again?

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[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful for that contribution.

Most countries on Earth—some 160—use UK international qualifications in their national secondary exams. Thousands of international schools use the UK’s K12 curriculum, and almost 25,000 students attend more than 40 overseas UK schools. As I have said, the latest figures show that our exports are worth almost £20 billion. That includes transnational education, which has experienced the most meteoric rise in value, albeit from a lower base. Some 67% of the value of those exports comes from higher education, much of it in the form of international students—that has mostly dominated the debate this afternoon—of whom there were around 442,000 in 2016.

That is a great record. We punch above our weight, but I think that there is unanimity in the Chamber that we are not yet fulfilling our potential, considering the quality of what we have and the need around the world for that kind of quality and service. Frankly, that is why we have a refreshed international education strategy.

Perhaps because of my background, I find that education is one of the most interesting sectors that I deal with as a trade Minister. Education gives almost no negatives. It brings real money and builds links, and people who come here to study then form part of teams or found companies and innovate, when they might not otherwise have done so. We must be restless, forward looking and ambitious—as everyone in this Chamber has been—to ensure that the potential of emerging opportunities in the global economy are used to their fullest.

The rapid shifts in economic and demographic power across the global economy are creating opportunities in precisely the areas where the UK enjoys a competitive advantage. As my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) knows well, last year the Prime Minister set out an ambition that we should seek to become the largest G7 investor in Africa. We need to work with countries, such as Nigeria, across Africa—I just met an economic Minister from Tunisia—to bring companies of all sorts into Africa, and what better than companies that work in education?

We look to deliver through the strategy in several ways. The strategy recognises that it is not Government who export, but our educational providers and institutions. That is why it is a sector-led strategy. I am grateful to all colleagues across the House, whatever their criticisms of elements of Government strategy, for supporting this strategy, which has been well supported and much crafted by the sector. The sector-led strategy was developed in co-operation with educators and looks to address the practical barriers that they face to exporting, and to find the right tools to overcome them.

Yesterday, I met Destination for Education, which is a coalition of pathway providers—people who help others come into our system—including INTO, Kaplan and Study Group. We discussed their future engagement with Government and, in particular, how we can co-operate on changes to the student visa process and respond effectively to competition from rival markets, which so many hon. Members have mentioned. That is about Government listening to the needs of providers and adapting our approach as we go. Several key organisations and individuals have been involved in achieving that new level of engagement and dialogue.

If I may—without being invidious to some—I highlight the work of Universities UK International, the UK skills partnership, English UK and, in particular, the British Council and its chief executive Sir Ciarán Devane, for their invaluable help in setting up engagement sessions to allow us to take on board the views of a broad range of education providers. Those providers have a wide range of skills and experience when it comes to exporting, and the strategy is about catering to these diverse needs.

[Stephen Timms]

Since the Minister has mentioned Universities UK, does he agree with my point that students who get their visas back after losing them because of a TOEIC cheating allegation should be helped by the universities to which they return, so they do not have to go back to square one and pay their fees all over again?

[Graham Stuart]

If a student finds themselves in that position, I hope and expect that the university would be supportive of their students. One of the strategy’s central aims is to ensure that we have a more welcoming offer. Sometimes there can be misconceptions and myths, but we need to recognise where we need to improve what we do, how we do it and the way that it is communicated. We recognise the need to do that in various markets if we are to meet the targets that we have set.

The strategy sets out to look at export data that we hold for education so that we have a more accurate basis on which to judge our success. At the strategy’s heart is an ambitious goal of achieving an increase in the value of our education exports to £35 billion per year, and to increase the number of international higher education students to 600,000 per year.

A lot of the focus of the debate has been on the visa issue. Although that is a Home Office issue rather than a trade Minister’s day job, at the heart of the strategy is a whole-of-Government approach, to put in place the practical, advisory and promotional support to strengthen the UK’s position at the forefront of global education, connect international partners, open markets and unlock new opportunities in rapidly growing areas such as education technology.

When I found that we had an education strategy that dated back to 2013 and was not on target, one of the first things I did was go and see the Secretary of State for Education. He came absolutely on board and was super supportive. I also reached out to Home Office colleagues; I do not know where the misunderstanding about the Home Office involvement in this strategy has come from, but it has really come forward and is an important part of the team. We are working together.

Colleagues will be aware that the Migration Advisory Committee made its recommendations, and the Government chose to go further than what MAC had suggested in terms of post-study provision. That is an indication of the Government’s commitment to getting that right. Matters are being kept under review, and if I were in Opposition, I might call that warm words, but it is much better than their not being under review.

We have our educational strategy; we are working as a team across Government; and we are committed to making sure that we get the whole package right so that we are as welcoming and competitive as we can be. The Home Office is fundamentally part of that, and is committed to keeping the immigration aspects of that package under review, in order to deliver in the appropriate way.

I probably have very little time left.