CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
I want to talk today about international skills in a number of
different senses. We have now to think of skills in a much broader
way than in the past. First, globalisation isn’t just about
financial flows of trade in goods, it is also about people and
knowledge. And second, we are way past the point where the Western
world was the repository of knowledge and skills and the rest of
the world earned its living from commodities and cheap labour.
If we think purely in vocational terms, a national strategy in
China has recently identified the need to establish a network of
1,200 training centres by 2020, and to train 3.5 million more
technicians. In India – where they estimate that, by 2022, 90 per
cent of new jobs will require qualified staff – the target is to
add 500 million skilled workers to the Indian labour force.
These are massive numbers – difficult to conceive. WorldSkills
2011 – held here in London – provides a more tangible example.
There were more than 50 countries represented at the competition:
from Estonia to Malaysia, Colombia to Australia, Ireland to Iran.
It proved that nations of all kinds are engaged in boosting the
skills of their people – to increase commercial success and
promote economic competitiveness as well as knowledge and study
for its own sake. By that I mean the self-confidence and
self-worth that individuals derive from becoming competent in
almost any kind of new pursuit – a reason why the Government has
protected the budget for informal adult learning.
One consequence of this global demand is that China, India and
the like represent a vast market in which our further education
colleges should compete. Plenty of colleges already have the
experience of creating bespoke training alongside employers.
They're well versed in new technologies and distance
learning. Accordingly, the Government is stepping up its efforts
to support further education as an export, as well as higher
education.
The globalisation of HE is relatively more advanced, of course,
and it's one in which UK universities have a played a
prominent part – whether judged on the popularity of this country
among both foreign students and academics, the high proportion of
UK research which involves international collaboration, or the
efforts of UK institutions to create satellite campuses around the
world. Last year, indeed, there were more than 400,000 students
living in their home countries who were enrolled on UK HE
programmes – more than the number studying in the UK. And where
our so-called trans-national education exports were worth around
£210 million in 2009/10, that could grow to an estimated £850
million by 2025.
The international focus of our universities is important, and the
Government is supporting it by forging links with the HE systems
of countries like Indonesia and Brazil, as well as China and
India. It's an agenda in which the British Council has a
pivotal role – as I've seen for myself on a number of
overseas visits including each of those four countries. Besides
its specific help in, say, establishing hundreds of partnerships
between UK universities and businesses and their Indian
counterparts, I gratefully acknowledge the Council's
contribution to attracting international students to the UK and
helping people to learn English.
But I return to my point about expanding the influence of our
skills sector. The UK India Education and Research Initiative, for
instance, includes an agreement to help the Indian government
develop its skills infrastructure. And we are working with our
Chinese colleagues to help them develop an apprenticeships
programme in China. John Hayes, the Skills Minister, returned from
China today having led a UK delegation to discuss this very
subject.
From a more domestic perspective, meanwhile, we're
working to ensure that FE colleges offering quality provision can
– just like universities – attract and benefit from international
students.
This is critical. The HE sector generates annual exports worth
£7.9 billion; FE contributes an additional £1.1 billion. It is
vital – notwithstanding the need to prevent any abuse of our
immigration system – to continue attracting overseas students to
the UK. This is a market in which we excel, thanks to the global
standing of our colleges and universities. And it's a
market that's growing. Some years back, the British
Council estimated that the number of HE students physically
studying outside their country of citizenship could rise to 5.8
million by 2020.
The outside world should know that our academic institutions and
our Government welcome genuine international students, and are
planning for long term growth. There is no visa limit on the
number of overseas students who are eligible to study here. The
recent immigration reforms are designed to cut out the bogus
applicants and poor quality colleges which have damaged the
reputation of the sector; they are certainly not designed to
undermine legitimate and quality colleges.
Of course, international students are not generally thought of by
the public as immigrants, as a recent report from the Migration
Observatory at Oxford University illustrates. During their
studies, international students enhance the campus experience of
their UK-born colleagues. After graduation and upon returning
home, the great majority remain keen supporters of this country,
maintaining the kinds of strong links that are good for business,
as well as fruitful cultural and political interaction.
At the same time, we have worked with the Home Office so that
reforms of the visa system take into account the needs of the
research community. Under Tier 1, scientists of exceptional talent
and achievement will be able to come to the UK without a job offer
– their merits assessed not by government officials, but by the
learned societies. And under Tier 5, the Government has enabled
universities to be allowed to expand the terms of their Government
Authorised Exchange Schemes.
As part of the Growth Review, we also announced our intention to
maximise education export opportunities in the priority markets of
Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and the Gulf. The
recent agreement with Brazil to accept 10,000 students to study
STEM subjects in the UK is a signal of intent – and I congratulate
Universities UK for negotiating this deal on behalf of our HE sector.
There's another way, though, in which the UK should be
thinking carefully about international skills. In this case, the
task is making sure that UK companies have people with the
linguistic ability, overseas experience and cultural awareness
necessary to do business abroad, to attract inward investment, to
export goods and services. That, in fact, is the blueprint for
sustainable economic growth.
But how well equipped are we to do this in a world where – for
all the assumptions about English remaining its lingua franca –
just six per cent of the global population speak English as a
first language? Indeed, while 51 per cent of internet use was
conducted in English in 2001 – against just five per cent in
Chinese – the figures for 2009 were 29 per cent in English and 20
per cent in Chinese.
The simple answer is that this is nowhere near good enough. The
report from the British Council and Think Global is instructive.
UK business leaders have said that, unless young people are
encouraged to broaden their horizons, the UK risks falling behind.
These employers deem knowledge and awareness of the wider world
more important when recruiting than degree subject and
classification. In fact, businesses for whom trade with people
from other cultures is all important are finding it hard to
recruit staff – confirming an earlier survey by the CBI.
The underlying causes aren't hard to fathom.
Universities UK recently estimated the number of UK students
studying abroad at 33,000. While more than in the past, this is
low by international standards. Between 1975 and 2006, the
mobility of our students increased 33 per cent. For the US, it was
40 percent; for France, 492 per cent. And that 33,000 is dwarfed
by the more than 400,000 foreign students studying full-time at
the UK's own universities.
It's here that further research conducted on behalf of
the British Council is particularly useful, because it establishes
some reasons why UK undergraduates are not spreading their wings
to the same extent as young people from other countries. The basic
picture chimes with previous evidence on barriers around language
and cost.
But there are also some surprising insights.Science students
appear to be less outward-looking than those studying arts
subjects – perhaps because a greater number of compulsory modules
can make going abroad more complicated. Of broader concern is the
finding that even those who gain international experience often
fail to appreciate how this actually enhances their employability.
And yet a HEFCE study has concluded that 75 per cent of Erasmus
students obtain a first or a 2.i compared to 60 per cent of
students who do not study abroad – and that Erasmus students are
more likely to be in employment six months after graduating,
earning more than their peers. For some, the fact that six per
cent of participants on the Language Assistants programme met
their life partner while overseas could be an even stronger
selling point; it's certainly something that I can relate
to having happily married my late wife in East Africa while
working overseas.
Clearly, we have work to do communicating more effectively the
benefits of going abroad – not only for language students and not
only through formal programmes. Spending a short, constructive,
period abroad, perhaps during the summer break, can have a
significant effect on people. We need to remember, too, that our
domestic student population is diverse. Just two fifths of
applicants to full-time undergraduate courses are 18 – most are
adults. So we require some creative ideas to open up opportunities
for those with parental or caring responsibilities, and for those
from less advantaged backgrounds.
Now, I'm not suggesting that nothing of this kind
isn't already in place. Besides managing the Erasmus
programme and the Language Assistants programme for the UK, the
British Council – for example – is part of the International
Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience.
It helps undergraduates studying science, engineering and applied
arts to gain practical training in more than 85 countries.
At the same time, mobility is a key strand of the UK India
Education and Research Initiative. Under its auspices, UK students
visit India for three weeks to learn about the country. Last year,
1,300 students applied for 200 places. My department is now
committing funds for a similar scheme in China – this one for more
than 400 UK students. And we are working with employers such as
Huawei to enable UK students to undertake work placements, also in China.
Nevertheless, further action is required. We're
determined, for example to widen participation in Erasmus after a
HEFCE report last year concluded that credit-mobile students are
"disproportionately white, female, middle-class and
academic high-achievers". To that end, BIS has
commissioned a working group on student mobility, in which the
British Council is involved. And its conclusions will be greatly
helped by the British Council's "Next
Generation" report – which shows what perceptions among
young people need addressing, suggests ways of raising awareness
and highlights the importance of increasing overseas experience
among students at post-1992 universities. It's telling
that Hertfordshire University has managed to increase its Erasmus
participation by two thirds simply through active promotion. I
recently met a group of academics and employers in the House of
Commons making this case strongly, and I want to pursue it.
I really hope that this event can generate some good ideas to get
the future UK workforce more switched on to the realities of
globalisation – so that they think about what's happening
to our world as much in terms of their careers as they do as
consumers. Although digital technologies certainly make the planet
feel smaller and more interconnected, there's still no
substitute for seeing things with our own eyes. The imperatives
here are social as well as economic, moral as well as personal.
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