A UK government policy on student visas that is founded on flawed and unreliable data will continue to be championed by the UK, in a political climate that values immigration over the economy. This was the message of Tony Millns, Chief Executive of English UK, at the recent Annual Conference of the 440-strong membership organisation. He closed the two-day event by urging members, in the words of Churchill, “Never give up, never give up, never give up”.
But the industry is battle weary, and the mood is of resilience, not attack. Jeremy Oppenheim, representing the UK Border Agency (UKBA), attended the conference and, in upbeat manner, informed the delegates – all of whom face a cap on the number of students that they can enrol this summer while a fiasco about accreditation is resolved – that Prime Minister, David Cameron, feels he was partly elected because he promised to reduce migration to the tens of thousands.
Carlos Varga-Silva of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University presented at the event, and underlined that migrants – the definition of which is confused by the public – are not even tracked in a comprehensive manner. They are counted in, but not counted out, and there is no data to indicate how many of the 80 per cent who no longer have legal status to remain in the UK after five years (based on Home Office report, The Migrant Journey) overstay.
Oppenheim took to the stage after him and decreed that regardless of data discrepancy, a firm decision to cut migration had been taken. “We have identified evidence of abuse with particular segments of the education sector and must tackle this,” he said, revealing that 41 per cent of forgeries detected in visa applications in 2010 related to Tier 4 (the Student Visa route). After years of various governments ignoring the sector, the latest coalition government has sought to amend the rules again, despite the outgoing Labour government overhauling Tier 4 prior to the last election, and the impact of these not having had time to sink in.
Mark Lindsay, Chief Executive of school chain, St Giles International, drew applause from the crowd when he urged Oppenheim to leave the dust to settle on these latest changes to the visa system, underlining that continual change is also turning education agents off the UK.
This sector of the international education industry; private language schools teaching English to foreign students, is under significant attack. Not only has it been hit by the new rules, ushered in from April, that forbid its students from working part-time (while those at FE colleges can work 10 hours a week and those at university 20 hours); but the government has ruled that current accreditation bodies responsible for assessing quality in the sector are no longer eligible, despite Accreditation UK’s 20-year track record, for example.
Worse still, none of the mainstream accreditation bodies currently consider private language schools to be within their jurisdiction, although Millns said he was hopeful that a resolution with ISI (Independent Schools Inspectorate) would be reached within weeks. In the meantime, until schools are able to become accredited and gain the elusive Highly Trusted Sponsor (HTS) status, they are capped in terms of how many student visas they are able to issue. And this, in itself, has been badly mismanaged, according to reports.
Millns said that he believed some members would simply concentrate on EU and Extended Student Visitor Visa (ESVV) business only - almost 40 per cent of business at English UK member schools is accounted for by students from the EU.
