Examination of Witnesses (Questions -1-59)
Q1 Chair: Could
I ask Mr Millns and Ms McLaren to come to the dais, please? Good
morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is the first session of the
Select Committee's inquiry into student visas, in particular the
impact of the proposed restrictions on Tier 4 migration. I welcome
to the dais our witnesses: Tony Millns, the Chief Executive of
English UK, and Elizabeth McLaren from the British Council. Could
I ask all Members to declare any special interest that they have
in any of these sectors? The rest of the Members' interests are
declared in the Register of Members' Financial Interests.
Dr Huppert: If
I could just declare for the record that I am a member of the
University of Cambridge.
Chair: Mr Millns, will you describe briefly
your role in English UK and what your organisation seeks to do?
Tony Millns: I
am Chief Executive of English UK, responsible for the general
management of the association. I have been in post for 11 years.
English UK is a professional and trade association of 450 accredited
English language centres, which range from centres in universities
like Edinburgh through to private colleges and independent schools
like Millfield. The 450 members are all accredited under the accreditation
scheme that we run in partnership with the British Council, which
currently accredits 535.
Q2 Chair: Basically,
you deal with the English language sector?
Tony Millns: We
do, yes.
Q3 Chair: Ms McLaren?
Elizabeth McLaren:
Hello, I am Elizabeth McLaren. I am the Manager of Accreditation
UK at the British Council. The British Council, as you know, is
the UK's international cultural relations organisation, and our
role in the Accreditation UK Scheme is the quality assurance of
English language teaching organisations here in the UK for the
benefit of international students.
Q4 Chair: Do you
agree with the Home Secretary and the Government's views that
the number of students who come to this country ought to be reduced?
Tony Millns: Only
as an incidental consequence of tackling any abuse that there
is in the system, not as a policy objective in itself. The reason
for that is that we feel that the objective of reducing net migration
in respect of students is pretty meaningless. Whether a student
comes into the country for 11 months and departs or stays for
14 months on a Masters course or three years on a PhD course and
then departs seems to us to be immaterial in the context of overall
immigration statistics.
Elizabeth McLaren: The British
Council supports the Government's commitment to an effective immigration
policy that avoids abuse of the student visa system, but we do
not support the wholesale reduction of student migration for the
purpose of numerical context.
Q5 Chair: I am
sure you have both seen the Select Committee's report published
last year into bogus colleges. Is there agreement between the
two of you that tackling the abuse of bogus colleges is very important,
and do you both believe that if this was done it would only be
an issue of genuine students coming into this country?
Tony Millns: Well,
broadly, yes, Chairman. If you recall, I did give evidence to
your Committee in that inquiry. It is important to point out just
how much has been done and was already in train on tackling bogus
colleges. The previous Register of Education and Training Providers
then maintained by the Department for Innovation, Universities
and Skills had nearly 4,500 colleges on it. The new Border Agency
Register of Sponsors has currently, I believe, some 2,292 colleges
on the register for Tier 4 purposes. Therefore, the number of
colleges able to bring in students has been halved in two to three
years. We entirely support that, partly from the point of view
of improving the UK's reputation for quality in education and
partly for tackling abuse in the system.
Q6 Chair: One
of the criticisms of the last Committee was that the previous
Government had not done enough to tackle bogus colleges.
Tony Millns: Yes,
and indeed—how shall I put this politely—it left it
rather late in the day to do so. David Blunkett, as Home Secretary,
announced new measures in July 2004. It took at least three years
for anything substantive to happen.
Q7 Chair: But
it seems that in the last few months the number of bogus colleges
has actually increased.
Tony Millns: I
doubt that, Chairman. However, there are signs that there is still
some abuse in the system and that accreditation procedures should
certainly be tightened up. As I put in my note to the Committee,
there are signs that a centre can get accreditation withdrawn
by one accrediting body and simply trot across the street, metaphorically,
and get accreditation from another body. That indicates that standards
are not consistent.
Q8 Chair: We will
be coming on to the problems of the current system in a moment
with Ms Blackwood. Can you just give me some figures? The number
of students that you cover, roughly?
Tony Millns: English
UK member centres bring in roughly 400,000 students a year out
of the roughly 600,000 who come to study English each year.
Q9 Chair: Benefit
to the economy: do we have any figures on that?
Tony Millns: Very
roughly, £1.5 billion a year.
Q10 Chair: Jobs?
Tony Millns: Around
30,000 at least.
Q11 Nicola Blackwood:
English language schools in my constituency have expressed a number
of concerns about the accreditation system: that it is allowing
bogus colleges through in the first place. Could you explain the
problems that you have observed with the accreditation system
as it stands?
Tony Millns: The
main one is the one that I alluded to a moment ago, which is that
the Border Agency has approved a number of accrediting bodies
for the purposes of the register and Tier 4. We do not believe
that the standards of some of the other bodies are as high and
as established as our scheme, which has been running for nearly
30 years. We have observed that colleges that have had accreditation
withdrawn, i.e. they have failed the quality test under, say,
the British Accreditation Council Scheme, have subsequently got
accreditation from another body and, thereby, have remained on
the register. That is clearly a loophole, in our view.
Q12 Nicola Blackwood:
How would you recommend closing those loopholes?
Tony Millns: Either
to reform the accreditation system and have one or at most two
accrediting bodies or the Border Agency is certainly considering
whether it could make some interim move so that as soon as a college
loses accreditation from any accrediting body it is withdrawn
from the register.
Q13 Chair: If
that system was tightened up and it cost more money in order to
tighten up the system, do you think your members would be prepared
to make a contribution if the inspection regime was better?
Tony Millns: I
do not think that it would cost more money to tighten up the inspection
and accreditation regime. However, it would certainly become high
stakes and any college that had accreditation withdrawn would
probably reach for the lawyers and go for judicial review against
the accrediting body. So there is likely to be a legal cost of
tightening up the system. That does not mean that I oppose it.
I would welcome it.
Chair: Ms McLaren, please feel free to
chip in whenever appropriate.
Q14 Lorraine Fullbrook:
Can you tell the Committee what representations you have made
to the Government to make the accreditation bodies, as you say,
better or of a higher quality?
Elizabeth McLaren:
We have been working with the Border Agency since before the inception
of the current Tier 4 system, with other accrediting bodies, to
look at standardisation and so on, and the British Council has
been answering the consultation documents that have been put forward
recently.
Q15 Lorraine Fullbrook:
Have these representations been fruitful?
Tony Millns: The
Border Agency is now conscious that there is a problem with accreditation
and that is why there is the proposal in the current consultation,
rather vaguely, to do something about it. Quite what is not clear.
They have previously considered trying to give the whole business
of accreditation to Ofsted, but our understanding is that Ofsted
has resisted that, does not see it as a priority or a job for
Ofsted. There is, I suppose, also the possibility that it could
be given to the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education,
which is increasingly looking at franchised degree courses in
private colleges.
Q16 Mark Reckless:
Is there any danger that a smaller number of accrediting bodies
could act to exclude new models of delivering courses or competition?
Tony Millns: I
do not think so. We have generally been quite flexible with accreditation.
The scheme has developed markedly over the 30 years or so and
I think we are well cognisant of the fact that many colleges now
do blended learning with an online component before the course
and online reinforcement and practice after the course. So, I
do not think we are closed to new models of delivery.
Q17 Nicola Blackwood:
Ms McLaren, what guidance do you currently get on acceptable levels
of standardisation for accreditation?
Elizabeth McLaren:
The standards and consistency meetings that were held in the early
days of Tier 4 have lapsed relatively recently with the pulling
out of Ofsted from the monitoring process. So there is not a lot
of guidance at the moment for the accrediting bodies, although,
of course, we all had to go through an assessment process before
we were approved and our systems have only continued to develop
since then. We regularly report on the number of accreditation
inspections that we conduct and the pass and fail rates for those
and we have no indication that there is concern about those rates.
Q18 Nicola Blackwood:
Are you required to report? Are all bodies required to report?
Elizabeth McLaren:
We are currently voluntarily reporting. This is my understanding.
Q19 Nicola Blackwood:
You have written guidance, I assume, that you interpret?
Elizabeth McLaren:
We have our own inspection criteria, which were overseen by Ofsted
in the early stages and have, therefore, been approved by the
Border Agency.
Tony Millns: The
accrediting bodies were approved for an initial term, I believe,
of two years. That approval has lapsed and, technically, none
of the accrediting bodies, I believe, is currently actually approved
by the Border Agency.
Chair: When did that happen?
Elizabeth McLaren:
Part way through 2009 .
Q20 Chair: Are
you telling this Committee that those who are now doing accreditation
are doing so without proper authority?
Tony Millns: Yes.
Q21 Chair: Does the Government
know this?
Tony Millns: Yes.
Q22 Chair: What have
they done about this?
Tony Millns: Nothing,
in fact.
Chair: Excellent.
Q23 Dr Huppert:
Just before we move on from accreditation and that rather interesting
piece of news, I have heard stories about checks by accreditation
bodies occasionally being at very unusual times—just before
Christmas—and asking for what seems a rather surprising
piece of information like title deeds to prove land ownership.
Are you comfortable that the process of accreditation, previous
comments aside, would actually stand up if there was more legal
involvement in checking the process?
Elizabeth McLaren:
Yes. We are very confident in our accreditation scheme. We check
not for deeds of land but that the organisation has appropriate
planning permission to be operating an educational institution
in the buildings that they are in and, of course, our inspectors
are checking on health and safety matters as well. That is one
of the ways that we can tell the difference between whether it
is a quality organisation or a bogus institution. We are reporting
on those regularly in our reports, but obviously the most important
thing is the quality assurance of the education provision and
the welfare of the students.
Tony Millns: We
do certainly check things such as whether an institution has D1
planning permission for use as educational premises, which in
places like Oxford and Cambridge is a very salient factor. It
is difficult to get.
Q24 Dr Huppert:
Indeed. Can I move on, then, to the Government's consultation
paper, which is proposing a range of changes? Which particular
areas of that consultation paper concern you either as good things
or bad things?
Tony Millns: There
are two. The first is a difficult area to address because the
statistics are complex, but it is the objective of reducing net
migration. Some very interesting work has been done by the Migration
Advisory Committee, by the Institute for Public Policy Research,
and by Professor Acton, who is giving evidence subsequently.
In fact, it appears that if you crunch all of the
statistics, for the Government to be sure of hitting the net migration
target that it has set—it is not actually in the Coalition
Agreement, which talks about cutting economic migration for work
and talks about limiting abuse; it does not talk about cutting
net migration—it would need to cut the student route to
zero. In other words, no international students would be able
to come into the country at all and even that might not be quite
enough.
There are several reasons but the basic measure is
the International Passenger Survey, which surveys about one in
500 people entering the country and leaving the country. It asks
them the purpose for which they are entering the country and the
purpose for which they are leaving the country. On entry they
probably say, "I am coming to study"; on exit they probably
say, "I am going home for a job", or something like
that. Therefore, the numbers of students entering and leaving
do not correlate.
Q25 Chair: It
is the use of the word "migrant", isn't it?
Tony Millns: It
is indeed. We would really wish to see students taken out of the
migration statistics completely, and even Migration Watch, I believe,
agrees broadly.
Chair: They are coming next week so we
will find out.
Tony Millns: Oh, good.
Q26 Dr Huppert:
A second issue was raised, but can I just check that what you
are saying is there is a fundamental problem with the questions
that are being asked, which means that while we may believe that
there are many more students coming in than going out, that is
not in fact true?
Tony Millns: Exactly
so. But even the prior step, the fact that the questions are being
asked at all: is the objective of reducing net migration the correct
one in terms of immigration control? Probably not. Can it be achieved?
Almost certainly not, from the statistics. Would we even know
if it had been? No, from the statistics.
Q27 Dr Huppert:
Your second point?
Tony Millns: My
second point is that the major area that concerns us and the universities
is the proposal to increase the level of English to B2 on the
Common European Framework of Reference. The CEFR, just to explain,
is a way of grading competence in language. It has only six bands
to describe moving from absolute beginner to native speaker competence.
B2 is, very broadly, a high grade A level on to, perhaps, first
year of a degree course. So it is a very high degree of competence
in language. Currently, of students coming in on university pathway
programmes—international foundation year as they are normally
called—around 70% to 80% come in with a much lower level
of English than that. 97% of them go on to university courses.
Q28 Dr Huppert:
"Much lower" means roughly what sort of standard?
Tony Millns: A2
to B1, roughly GCSE. You are dealing with people who broadly completed
year 12 or year 11 in corresponding terms in their own education
system. They tend not to have year 13, and a foundation year programme
does three things. It gives them subject top-up, English language
skills and the study skills to be an independent learner, because
a lot of the rest of the world has much more rote learning than
we tend to in sixth-form terms here. Now, if—
Q29 Chair: Just
following the pathway point that was raised by Dr Huppert, how
many are on the pathway who come to learn English but then will
end up at a university?
Tony Millns: At
least 60,000 to 70,000 a year.
Chair: Will end up in a British university?
Tony Millns: Yes,
indeed. It is a major feeder route for universities including—you
are hearing from LSE and Imperial later—some of the most
prestigious institutions. If the language level was raised to
B2, it would cut out the majority of those students.
Elizabeth McLaren:
The British Council, recognised worldwide as a leading authority
in English language teaching, completely supports the concern
about the increased level.
Chair: Yes, we will be coming to that
later on.
Q30 Mark Reckless:
Mr Millns, the Government has this target of reducing immigration
to the tens of thousands and we made great play of that at the
election. If we are to hit that—you are saying that there
is a problem with the statistics that is biasing up the estimates
for net immigration of students—what is the corollary of
that? Where is the higher immigration where the statistics are
telling us that it is lower than it is in terms of a counterpart
to the student mis-estimate?
Tony Millns: Well,
that is why I say I believe that the objective is actually unattainable,
because the work numbers—Tiers 1 and 2, now combined—were
previously, in 2009, 33,270 and the family routes were roughly
49,000. So putting those two together is 82,000. If you took the
figure for net migration, which it is generally accepted is 196,000,
that would leave you still at 114,000 if you closed completely
both other routes other than student migration. Now, at present
the Government has agreed to limit the work routes down from 33,270
to 21,700; a cut of 11,570, roughly a third. It is reviewing the
family and settlement routes. Even if it reduced those also by
a third it would only bring net migration down to 168,000. That
would leave the student route and you would need, as the Migration
Advisory Committee estimated, to reduce the student route by 88,000,
which is a third of the student route.
Q31 Chair: Our
last report on the cap actually has all this information.
Tony Millns: Exactly.
The problem with the statistics is that you cannot be sure when
you have reached the 88,000 because of the numbers in and out
problem that I referred to.
Q32 Mark Reckless:
Don't these, as you describe them, seemingly very significant
reductions in net migration require much smaller reductions in
gross immigration to obtain them?
Tony Millns: I
doubt it because you cannot actually divorce the two. In terms
of gross migration, you have figures on the student side of 468,000,
roughly 200,000 of whom are on student visitor visas. The rest
are on Tier 4 visas. If you were to reduce the, if you like, top
line number by a third, you are still left with the problem that
you will not know how many of them have actually exited the country.
You have to reduce the numbers in—the Institute for Public
Policy Research estimates—by more than half to get the reduction
in net migration on the statistics.
Q33 Lorraine Fullbrook:
I would just like to talk about your second concern on the Government
consultation paper of students coming to study here having level
B2 English. What exactly is wrong with this country stating that
we require people to have an A-level standard of English to come
here and study, particularly as you say that 30,000 go on to degree
standard? What exactly is wrong with that?
Tony Millns: Because
many of them will have left school in countries where the teaching
of English is not particularly good. Their subject teaching may
have been quite good. In other words, they may be quite good physicists
or mathematicians or whatever. They require a course that brings
their English language level up from around A2 to B1 to B2, IELTS 6.5
for university entrance, and they require that combined with the
subject knowledge that is taught in and through English so that
they attain the subject knowledge competence in English as well
as what you might call a general English ability.
Q34 Lorraine Fullbrook:
Are you saying they cannot do this in their own country before
they come here?
Tony Millns: It
would be difficult for them to do so and there are great advantages
to learning English in an English language speaking country.
Chair: I think we understand. We will
be coming on to that later when we look at the British Council.
Thank you.
Q35 Mr Clappison:
I think you are saying to us that it is a key part of this that
they have the opportunity to learn English alongside their preparation
for study for their higher degrees. I have to say, if GCSE is
the level, as somebody with a GCSE in French, I would not be very
happy about going to learn engineering, physics or law in France
with my GCSE French. Would you?
Tony Millns: I
took O-level. It would have been possible to make a start on an
A-level equivalent course with a good O-level grasp of the language.
Q36 Lorraine Fullbrook:
That is what we are asking for in the consultation paper.
Tony Millns: No,
B2 is much higher and that is what—
Lorraine Fullbrook: You said it was broadly
A-level standard.
Tony Millns: Yes.
The proposals are jacking up the level to—
Q37 Mr Clappison:
Without decrying the standards of learning of O-levels, it is
international comparisons, and on the basis of what people can
understand I think it would be possible to over-estimate the proficiency
of somebody in a language who is attaining GCSE, particularly
their facility for understanding it and speaking it.
Tony Millns: I
take your point and the foundation year programme is structured
so that it is front-loaded with the English language. So they
learn the English first, get that up, and then they do the subject
coverage.
Q38 Mr Clappison:
How tight are the controls for ensuring that somebody who has
come here purportedly to undertake a foundation year actually
undertakes it and that when they have undertaken it they go on
to study something at a higher education institution?
Tony Millns: All
of the providers who do that kind of course will be Tier 4 sponsors.
They will have had compliance visits from the Border Agency. They
will also be accredited by one of the accrediting bodies and they
will almost all have pathways into universities and validation
agreements with universities. So they will be reviewed in at least
three ways to make sure that they are providing a good level of
education.
Q39 Mr Clappison:
Members of this Committee went to Nigeria, I think it was in 2007,
and we were told by the Embassy in Nigeria—they specifically
drew it to our attention—that they had had a significant
number, I think running into the hundreds if not thousands, of
people applying from Nigeria for a visa to undertake a foundation
year at a particular university in this country and that only
a handful of them had actually turned up for the course, although
the visas had been issued to them.
Tony Millns: That,
I would think, is unlikely to be the case today because—
Mr Clappison: They told us that.
Tony Millns: Yes,
and that was 2007 before the points-based system was introduced
and before people on the sponsor register had a duty to record
and report students who do not arrive for the course or students
who depart the course early.
Q40 Bridget Phillipson:
The point that you are making is that while it is important that
people have a certain level of English when they arrive, actually
being exposed to the language day to day while in the UK massively
accelerates their language proficiency. It is being based within
an English-speaking country in order to accelerate that learning?
Tony Millns: Yes,
precisely.
Q41 Dr Huppert:
Do you have any figures on how many students who are doing the
foundation year go on to do a university degree, and of those
who do not, how many of them have left the country and how many
are missing?
Tony Millns: The
five leading providers of foundation year programmes estimate
that the numbers going on are 97% of those taking foundation year
courses. That means that 3% do not go on. I am afraid I do not
have any statistics nor, I believe, does the Border Agency, as
to whether they return home. But if you look at the report that
the Home Office published back in September, The Migrant Journey,
they reckon that around 3% of students did not ultimately return
home but most of those had transferred to family routes to settlement
because they had married or whatever in the UK.
Q42 Chair: But
you cannot do that now. You cannot switch. If you come as a student
you cannot stay as a spouse, can you?
Tony Millns: You
can, and you can also, or you could, move into the work route
and that could also lead to settlement.
Q43 Chair: But
you would have no problem with the Government introducing measures
to stop switching?
Tony Millns: No,
indeed. I think that what the Home Secretary has referred to as
breaking the link between temporary and permanent migration is
very much the way to go. That is why we questioned the policy
objective of reducing net migration.
Q44 Chair: Indeed.
Can I just explain: Members of the Committee have had to leave
not because of anything you have said.
Tony Millns: I
should certainly hope not, Chairman.
Chair: They are on another Standing Committee
on the police, but they will return.
Tony Millns: I
understand.
Q45 Mr Winnick:
Ms McLaren, what will the proposed changes have on the reputation
of this country, in your view, abroad?
Elizabeth McLaren:
I think it will certainly damage our reputation as a leading education
provider in the world because students will be put off by what
they see as an unwelcoming approach to international education
and will choose other destinations. If they are finding it difficult
to begin their study journey here, as they currently would by
doing English and then perhaps foundation and moving on into the
university sector, and they have to go elsewhere to get their
English medium education first, then they may well choose just
to stay there for their university studies and further education.
Q46 Mr Winnick:
Taking Mr Clappison's point a moment ago about possible abuses—Nigeria
was mentioned—do the British Council and Mr Millns accept
that abuses have occurred where prospective students are far more
concerned about coming to Britain to try and stay and work, earn
their living and not rely on public funds but, nevertheless, use
studies as a pretext for coming here?
Tony Millns: There
certainly have been abuses of that kind. I think significant progress
has been made in reducing them and there is certainly one proposal
in the current consultation that we would broadly support, which
is to rank countries by a risk assessment so that countries in
the Indian subcontinent, Nigeria and one or two others, would
be rated higher risk and only the most highly compliant sponsor
institutions would be able to recruit students from there. There
are difficult human rights issues involved in making that judgement
but certainly it is one of the Border Agency's proposals.
If I might, Chairman, just on Mr Winnick's first
point, international education is a growth sector of the economy
and likely to be a very important part of the knowledge economy
of the future. I have here the International Students Strategy
for Australia running up to 2014. It is Australia's third
largest export sector. They have grown it from 47,000 students
in 1990 to 500,000, i.e. more than 10 times, in 2009, and they
are aggressively attacking us. This document points out—
Chair: The Australians?
Tony Millns: Yes,
very aggressively.
Q47 Chair: Revenge
over the cricket, no doubt. Are they our biggest competitors?
Tony Millns: Australia,
Canada and the US are the main competitors, Chairman, yes.
Q48 Mr Winnick:
Do you accept that the large majority of those over the years
who have come to study in this country are genuine?
Tony Millns: Absolutely.
We have no doubt about that, especially if they come to legitimate
institutions.
Q49 Mr Winnick:
Would you put a percentage on it? In broad terms, 70%? Less? More?
Tony Millns: That
is extremely difficult, partly because it is varied and partly
because, going back to what I said about the previous Register
of Education and Training Providers, roughly half the colleges
that were able, prior to 2007, to bring in students have had the
power to do so removed from them. Now, not all of those were,
shall we say, actively bogus in terms of being fronts for immigration.
Some of them were simply poor quality and were ripping off the
students. It is difficult to know how many were bogus, but there
is no doubt that it was a significant loophole and I have said
so before to this Committee.
Q50 Mr Winnick:
The previous Government closed it?
Tony Millns: Moved
to close it. The actual measures were not taken until 2007-08,
and came into force largely in 2009, which was only barely a year
before the 2010 general election.
Q51 Mr Winnick:
We have the point. Ms McLaren, should we be concerned about the
international reputation of this country? Ministers would say
first and foremost we should be concerned about our own position:
tightening controls, avoiding abuses. How far, in your view, should
we be concerned about an adverse effect abroad from Britain's
reputation for receiving students?
Elizabeth McLaren:
The strength of the UK's educational offer is very important in
terms of the UK's reputation, and it has an impact on all areas
of the UK's economy in terms of people being interested in working
with us, doing business with us, cultural relations and all the
other aspects.
Tony Millns: I
would add to that that I am sure university colleagues will point
out that some very significant departments, particularly in science,
technology, engineering and maths, are only kept open by international
student fees.
Chair: Thank you. We have some very quick
supplementaries from Members of the Committee because the next
witnesses are here.
Q52 Nicola Blackwood:
I just wanted to return to the language proficiency issue for
a moment. If the level is increased to B2 I understand that the
Government is currently proposing to allow a pre-sessional course
of just three months. But if they extended that to one year to
allow highly trusted sponsors to offer English language courses
and foundation courses specifically for that route that you have
mentioned, would that meet the requirements of the industry?
Tony Millns: That
would certainly help, or leaving the level for NQF level 3 courses
currently at B1 would be the other way of doing it. We have discussed
both with the Border Agency.
Q53 Nicola Blackwood:
Those are the two options that you are recommending?
Tony Millns: Well,
we would regard them as a reasonable concession, given the damage
that the current proposal is likely to do.
Q54 Mark Reckless:
Would you at least agree that immigration could be reduced by
restricting the post-study work route?
Tony Millns: It
is difficult to estimate that and the consultation paper does
not try. Post-study work is an important component of the offer
of a degree course in the UK. Well, students say this and I think
you will find in the consultation that a lot of students have
responded on that point. The Australian strategy that I have referred
to makes great play of the fact that that element makes their
offer better than ours.
Q55 Chair: How
many years do they have?
Tony Millns: Two
years.
Chair: The Australians offer two years.
Q56 Lorraine Fullbrook:
On your statistics, what are the top five countries requiring
student entry visas?
Chair: In the world, you mean?
Lorraine Fullbrook: Yes.
Chair: I think it comes from Elizabeth
McLaren's statement that we are the best in the world. Which are
the other four?
Lorraine Fullbrook: In terms of countries
asking for student visa entries to the UK, what are the top five
countries your statistics show?
Tony Millns: Source
countries from which students come to the UK?
Lorraine Fullbrook: Yes.
Chair: Is that right, Ms Fullbrook?
Lorraine Fullbrook: Yes.
Tony Millns: Is
that what you mean?
Chair: Where do they come from?
Tony Millns: China,
Russia, India, probably currently still Japan and South Korea
in terms of English language students.
Q57 Lorraine Fullbrook:
You seem quite doubtful. Do you not have statistics that show
this?
Tony Millns: Well,
we have statistics that show the major source countries for English
language students. I think you are asking me about education overall.
Lorraine Fullbrook: Correct.
Tony Millns: I
would have to go back to the Home Office documents and look at
that. I could not give you—
Chair: We have the top five. It is in
the consultation document: China, 20,000; India, 18,000; Pakistan,
13,000; Russia, 9,000; United States, 9,000; Taiwan, 8,000.
Elizabeth McLaren:
It is obviously different from the priority markets for English.
Chair: For yourselves, yes. It would
be very helpful if we could have your list as well.
Tony Millns: Yes,
of course.
Q58 Chair: Thank
you very much. Thank you for giving evidence. We are most grateful.
What would be very helpful: you seem to know a lot about Australia,
Ms McLaren. Would you have this information about the Australian
model?
Elizabeth McLaren:
We can find it for you.
Chair: Would you? That would be very
helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you for giving evidence today.
Tony Millns: Thank
you very much.
Q59 Chair: We
will be following up this point. I think it is unsatisfactory
that the authority for accreditation agencies has expired.
Tony Millns: It
has technically lapsed because it has not been renewed.
Chair: We will write to the Minister.
Thank you.
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