After a long wait, it is a relief to finally have the paper. First, the Coalition had their initial 2013 version (which still reads pretty well, except for its comments about MOOCs, even if it had a rather different list of target countries … ); the subsequent Conservative Governments then had their 2019 Strategy, with its clear targets, and subsequent updates in 2021, 2022 and 2023; and, in October 2024, the newly installed Labour Government promised ‘a review of the International Education Strategy’, which is what has now landed. It’s good to be clear: the new paper gives a comprehensive summary of the UK’s strengths, usefully revives some old initiatives (like a “reformed” Education Sector Action Group), and promises to export £40 billion worth of education by 2030. Despite my mixed commentary below – given the general rightward shift in the country, the differences of opinion across Whitehall on issues like student migration, and given all the other energy-consuming issues on Number 10’s plate – I do not underestimate the challenges involved in getting the paper to this stage. Like the majority of its predecessors, it has been overseen by the indefatigable Sir Steve Smith, the UK Government’s International Education Champion to whom the sector owes so much. My first impression was that the paper is shorter than we might have expected – c.50 pages of large text, with lots of ‘throat clearing’ (the Introduction arrives on page 10 and the meat doesn’t start until page 17…). The 2019 Strategy, on the other hand, was about the same length but had much less text and had 23 clear “Actions.” The 2021 Update, on the other hand, was about 70 pages long and had an update on progress toward the specific actions. Similarly, the three Ministers put up to front the report are, in government terms, second rank (Minister of State) rather than first rank (Secretary of State) and two sit in the unelected Upper Chamber rather than the elected House of Commons. This not only sends a negative message about the seriousness with which government issues pertaining to education export are taken, but it also has a relatively low word count. For instance, the Forewords to the 2019 Strategy and the 2021 Update were written by two Secretaries of State. Maybe none of this is important. It is better to be concise than wordy. Who cares how many pages there are, what font size has been used and which Ministers have written the inoffensive Foreword? I think it probably does matter a bit as there are no areas of education as competitive as international exports, and it is one of the few areas where the UK can still undeniably claim world-class status. Our main competitors read such UK strategies closely, just as the UK’s own initial 2013 strategy emerged partly as a response to the strategies that had already been adopted in other English-speaking countries. A confident country keen to expand its share of a particular global market tends to project itself as such, whereas a thinner paper that hedges its bets may be regarded, perhaps accurately, as reflecting lukewarm support for educational exports in parts of Whitehall.
More importantly, the new Strategy is keen to emphasise that it is a cross-Government initiative: ‘Leadership of this agenda now sits firmly across the government, with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office joining the Department of Education and the Department of Business and Trade as co-owners of the strategy.’ This is welcome. However, the Home Office remains absent, and they are the only ones in charge of matters like student visas, post-study work regulations, and Basic Compliance Assessments. Our higher education institutions will continue to have one arm tied behind their back while trying to expand this important export market until the Home Office is forced to share responsibility for international students studying in the UK equally with other parts of government or until the Home Office is overridden by the center of Whitehall. The Home Office ministers and mandarins will still, however, have had to sign the new paper off and their behind-the-scenes influence is evident. Even though the paper makes numerous commitments to “leverage,” “champion,” and “continue doing things,” it does not take advantage of the opportunity to clearly establish new goals for higher education. The goal of the study from 2013 was to “increase the number of international students studying at higher education institutions in the UK by 15-20% over the next five years.” The 2019 Strategy had a target of increasing students ‘in the UK to 600,000 per year’ by 2030. Now, however, there is an overall goal of increasing all ‘education exports to £40 billion per year’ by the end of this decade but, on higher education students specifically, we only get a commitment to ‘support the sustainable recruitment of higher-quality international students’, warm words about ‘Well-managed and responsible recruitment’ and an objective of ‘building a more resilient, diverse and long-term pipeline of international talent.’ I’m curious how many additional synonyms there are for “reducing” the number of new student arrivals in the UK. According to the press release issued by the Department of Education, students attending TNE (transnational education), with all of its difficulties and opportunities, have left the country. Because it is a document that applies to the entire United Kingdom, Whitehall refers to the “rest of the UK” as “rUK.” There are nice words about Scotland’s (in truth poor-performing) schools system and the controversial Curriculum for Excellence, which may be rather useful to Scottish policymakers as they look ahead to the 2026 elections to the Scottish Parliament, when education is expected to feature quite heavily.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of long references to things that are clearly a part of modern education but don’t immediately seem to be related to creating a stronger framework for encouraging UK educational exports around the world. These references may have been included to flesh out the text. For instance, “the UK Government expects all nurseries, schools, and colleges to have a climate action plan, and in collaboration with leading environmental and education organizations, provides direct support through the innovative Sustainability Support Programme,” which can be found on page 22, elaborates on the topic of climate change. In order to instill sustainability, climate awareness, and a connection to nature, the program ensures that educational settings are motivated to take meaningful climate action and supported in doing so. It is possible to fully support the notion of a climate emergency and man-made climate change, as well as the necessity of taking action to address these issues, but it is still difficult to comprehend the purpose of such a text in a brief paper promoting educational exports from the UK. Inadvertently, the paper reveals a long-standing and difficult issue for policymakers: the gap in our general attitudes toward selling UK education to people from overseas and delivering education to domestic students. For instance, as a nation, we oppose old boys’ networks at home and support soft power abroad by making friends in high places through education. In England, Access and Participation Plans tightly control who can attend university. However, when it comes to international students, we rely on extremely high tuition fees and an incoming International Student Levy that only upper-middle-class students can afford. We don’t even care if, at times, more international students crowd out home students. (Those who criticize Trinity Hall for promoting their outreach efforts to a small number of UK independent schools frequently overlook the fact that the entire higher education system is supported by some of the wealthiest individuals from other nations.) There is another contradiction illustrated by the new International Education Strategy too: while Ministers block Eton College from working with partners to set up a school for disadvantaged Brits in Middlesborough, the new Strategy celebrates famous independent schools establishing footprints abroad. So Charterhouse Lagos is, we are told, ‘a model for future school partnerships abroad, strengthening bilateral ties and delivering long-term educational and economic benefits.’ It appears that Floreat Carthusia is in another country and Pereat Etona is at home (please correct my Latin in the Comments section below…), which, to be honest, doesn’t seem to make much sense. Realpolitik is at least a German term for everything.
