Welcome
Kia Ora,
Response has been great so far for the 2009 International Education Conference. It’s coming up soon – August 6 & 7 in Wellington. There are a lot of fantastic speakers and sessions, so if you haven’t registered yet, don’t miss out. You can register HERE.
Have Your Say on “Waka Jumping”
The Ministry of Education, the Department of Labour and NZQA are working together to address the issue of students changing provider soon after arriving in New Zealand.
Education New Zealand has been lobbying for changes to policy which will protect the investments institutions have made in recruiting students overseas. We will be putting together a submission in response to the Discussion Document the agencies have created.
If you would like to be part of this submission, please send your ideas and comments to Robert Stevens by June 15. You can also respond with your own submission using the Feedback Form.
ENZ is very pleased to see progress on this matter, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the Discussion Document.
Auditor General Inquiry into Immigration Matters
Last week the Government’s Auditor General released a report on a range of immigration matters. The matters included in the review that are of direct relevance and interest to education exporters include: (i) the integrity and probity of Immigration New Zealand; (ii) the competence and powers of staff making visa and permit decisions; and (iii) the quality of immigration decisions.
ENZ’s analysis of the report reveals that it contains many sensible recommendations in areas such as:
• increasing the resourcing of offshore immigration staff;
• upgrading technology in order to increase efficiency of immigration staff processing applications;
• vetting INZ staff prior to employment, including undertaking police checks;
• increased and more focussed staff training (particularly for locally engaged staff);
• identifying and managing conflicts of interest; and
• creating an internal culture where it is possible to raise concerns.
However, one set of recommendations, relating to improving the quality of decision making when assessing visa and permit applications may contain a fish-hook for education exporters. The Auditor General makes a series of recommendations that question some aspects of the quantity of application processing targets for immigration staff in their performance agreements. The Auditor General questions whether the emphasis on speed of processing comes at a cost of quality of decision making.
ENZ’s view is that while the Auditor-General may well have a point, the education export industry would not support anything that adds to processing times. This is because (and this is confirmed by ENZ’s Immigration Benchmarking research) fast and efficient student visa processing times offer a strong competitive advantage over competitor countries. While increasing quality of decision making is to be welcomed, Education New Zealand would not support any move that increased processing times - we would argue that NZ should be decreasing processing times while improving quality of decision making through the deployment of additional resources (both human and technological).
PACE Update
New Zealand Education Fair, Seoul
Be part of this inaugural New Zealand only event on the weekend of Saturday 31 October and Sunday 1 November 2009. Held at the centrally located Seoul Plaza Hotel, institutions, agents and commercial sponsors will all collaborate to raise the profile of New Zealand Education in Korea.
Numbers of Korean students continue to track well for the industry, Korea remains our second largest market. All sectors are welcome to attend and further information about the event can be found HERE or by contacting Sarah
Malaysia FTA Talks Complete
Last week New Zealand and Malaysia concluded Free Trade talks, and an Agreement is now imminent once both governments approve the content.
Education New Zealand has been informed by Trade Minister Tim Groser that the Agreement will include some good news for the export education industry.
Details of the agreement remain confidential until the Government has signed off on it, but we will keep you informed once this has happened. You can read a press release we issued about the FTA HERE.
Top Agents Honoured
Education New Zealand, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise and Immigration New Zealand are thrilled to announce the winners of the annual performance awards for New Zealand Specialist Agents in India.
Congratulations to Liz Batra's IEGC, Kangaroo Studies and Indopacific for their respective achievements.
• Top Performing Agency 2008 – 09: Liz Batra’s IEGC
• First Runner up 2008 – 09: Kangaroo Studies Pvt Ltd
• Second Runner up 2008 – 09: Indopacific Education
NZ Now the World’s “Most Peaceful Country”
New Zealand has taken top place on a list of the world’s most peaceful nations, according to the Global Peace Index. It’s just one more confirmation of why New Zealand is considered to be a safe and welcoming country for international students and visitors alike.
The index was collated by the Economist Intelligence Unit for a new think tank called the Institute for Economics and Peace. It uses a weighted mix of 23 criteria, including foreign wars, internal conflicts, respect for human rights, the number of murders, the number of people in jail, the arms trade, and degrees of democracy.
Traditionally the Northern European countries such as Iceland, Denmark and Norway have topped the list. New Zealand has placed in the top four countries since the index was created in 2007, but this year moved into the top position for the first time.
New Zealand’s sparse population, political stability, and geographical separation from neighbouring countries all combine to reduce the stresses that can cause violence to increase. Since 1984 New Zealand has been completely nuclear-free, which also supports its peaceful image.
China Paying for More Offshore Postgrads
(Via University World News)
The Chinese government is encouraging its best graduate students to study abroad in the US, Europe and other developed countries. At least 4,000 of these top graduates from the 211 elite universities and 1,000 a year from another 70 key institutions will be chosen.
The students will receive some US$20,000 year to cover living expenses and, depending on cost of tuition, may not require the overseas university or faculty host to provide more. They can go anywhere abroad as long as the foreign university or faculty will accept them, pending approval of China's ministry.
In the past, many of these students stayed on after graduating and in many western countries are contributing substantially to university research projects.
Now, however, the proportion of graduates returning to China has dramatically increased, even before the economic slowdown, because of the greater opportunities that exist at home. That repatriation will almost certainly increase.
E-news is a newsletter for the Export Education industry, compiled by Education New Zealand. You can access previous E-news newsletters on our website at www.educationnz.org.nz .
With Regards.
Education New Zealand
www.educationnz.org.nz