Letter to the Chairman of the Committee
from the Rt Hon David Miliband MP, Secretary of State for Foreign
and Commonwealth Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
I am grateful for the interest the Foreign Affairs
Committee has consistently shown in our Chevening Programme of
scholarships and fellowships. In the Committee's Report on the
FCO's Departmental Report 2006-07 you recommended that we should
send you the findings of our internal review of the Chevening
Programme in 2006 and explain the basis on which Posts could select
scholars for the Chevening Programme. I enclose a copy of the
review.
I want to take this opportunity to tell you
about our plans for the future of funding for scholarships and
fellowships. In our review we found a transformed situation in
higher education, and an FCO scholarship programme that has not
always been well aligned to foreign policy goals. So we propose
a smaller, better organised programme, focussed on the leaders
of tomorrow, from a wide range of backgrounds. The savings we
make from this reform will support new priority programmes on
climate change.
12 years ago 30,000 post-graduate students came
to the UK from outside the EU. Since then that number has gone
up by 160%. British universities now actively market themselves
overseas, and many offer their own scholarships. So we need to
focus on the value-added from the FCO's scholarship schemes. This
value-added is the creation of relationships between the United
Kingdom and the international leaders of the future.
We currently support three scholarship schemes
(Chevening, Marshall and Commonwealth) in addition to our Chevening
fellowship scheme. Our scholarship schemes bring young post-graduates
to the UK, normally for Master's degree courses. Our fellowship
scheme brings mid-career professionals for 12-week custom designed
specialist courses.
The review also found that the purpose of the
scholarship schemes has not always been clear. We have not always
sought out students we thought could become international leaders.
We have pursued high numbers of scholars, which has sometimes
reduced focus on quality. We have not consistently done enough
to build the personal relationships with the scholars which we
need to get the most out of the schemes, including during selection,
which we have sometimes left to others, during their time in the
UK and after they have finished their studies. We have not always
worked closely enough with our partner government departments
with an international focus, or with British business, to ensure
the scholarship schemes work for them. And the Chevening scholarship
brand has been stronger in some countries than in others.
The schemes have had real strengths. But we
need to refocus them to ensure that these strengths are consistent.
We will maintain a global scheme, but we will focus scholarships
particularly on those countries such as China and India which
are going to be most important to our foreign policy success over
coming years. We will select more carefully to ensure our scholars
really are potential future leaders, with our Heads of Mission
having personal responsibility for ensuring their Posts are getting
this right. We will work to ensure we are drawing from the widest
possible pool of potential scholars.
We will maintain a much closer relationship
with those scholars who do come, making sure that right from the
start of the selection process we begin to build links with them,
increasing our contact with them while they are here, and staying
in closer touch with them after they leave, including through
the introduction of a new web-based alumni networking system.
We want to increase the engagement that both
British business and government departments with an international
focus have with the scholars, and we are starting a consultation
process to ensure this happens. We will work in the future through
two scholarship schemes only, the Marshall scheme in the USA and
the Chevening scheme in the rest of the world, and will develop
the strength of these brands. This means an end to the FCO contribution
to the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. We will maintain
the highly successful Chevening fellowship scheme at its current
level.
These changes will free up some £10 million
a year for new activity on our new policy goals. The majority
of this will be spent on a series of programmes to support the
development and implementation of a low-carbon, high-growth economy,
in particular: strengthening the evidence base which supports
ambitious decision-making on the transition to a low carbon economy;
mobilising support for strong and early action from political,
business and civil society leaders in key countries such as the
US (at federal and State level), China (both centrally and in
provinces) and in India; and promoting regulation which favours
energy efficiency and deployment of low carbon technologies.
I will inform the House separately through a
written ministerial statement. I am also writing to the Commonwealth
Scholarship Commission and to Universities UK about these changes.
11 March 2008
| 
