Immigration Minister Hon David Cunliffe this morning announced changes to student immigration policy. The major initiatives are:

• Graduate Job Search Permit duration is to be extended from 6 months to 12 months;
• Practical Experience Work Permit extended from two years to three years were relevant to the requirements for registration with professional bodies; and
• Changes to the requirements for work access for English language students.

The extension of the Graduate Job Search Permit is particularly welcome, and will improve the attractiveness of New Zealand as a destination for international students.

The Practical Experience Work Permit will make New Zealand more attractive as a destination for architecture and accounting students, as they can now stay on and work in New Zealand for three years to qualify for membership of their professional body.

The specific details of the English language work access policy change were not detailed in the Ministerial media release. However, during the Minister’s Press Conference to announce the policy changes, the Minister expanded to note that this related to the current DoL requirement that students have an IELTS 5.0 or above at the time of application for a student visa or permit in order to quality for access to employment in New Zealand. This requirement is to be modified to allow English language students to meet the English language requirement for work opportunities after the date of application for a student visa or permit.  The new policy will state that once their English language ability is at IELTS 5.0, they would be eligible for work opportunities.

In addition, the Department of Labour is exploring alternative English language testing systems as a means of testing English language competence.  The main reason why other systems have not been used in the past has been due to issues with verification. IELTS is electronically verifiable, making it difficult for applicants to falsify testing scores. However, following calls from the industry to be more flexible, the Department of Labour is now exploring adopting TOEFL.  

ENZ continuously advocates on immigration policy, and have contributed throughout this process. Our view is that the changes are another step in the right direction and will improve our competitiveness. However, we are always conscious that immigration advocacy is 'a constant work in progress'. In this regard, we will continue to research and advocate on this issue and an update of ENZ’s 2005 Immigration Policy and Practice Benchmarking report is being undertaken by ENZ over the next few months and will again benchmark NZ’s immigration policy and practice with Australia, Canada, USA and the UK. 

The Minister’s release is HERE

ENZ's release is HERE

You can view ENZ's submission to the DoL HERE

Discussion during a Promotions Reference Group meeting around the rate at which students 'pathwayed' to other sectors or into work was the catalyst for a joint ENZ and DoL sponsored study on the subject.  The report, 'International Students: Studying and staying on in New Zealand' has just been released this morning.

The full report can be accessed HERE  

The report is quite detailed, but a summary of key findings is in the ENZ Press Release, which you can read HERE

Whilst this research is valuable and interesting, we are mindful that student aspiration and study/migration behavior has changed over time, and changes markedly depending on nationality. The report also uses aggregate permit data, and does not always differentiate non fee paying students. This skews the results in the schools sector particularly, whilst the ELS sector data only relates to students who had a student permit.  However, these sorts of caveats apply to all migration data based research.

Importantly, the report is able to make comparisons with Australia, and found that (for example) whilst the ELS-to-Tertiary pathway was 37% in New Zealand, it was only 23% in Australia.