This initiative was based not only on the income that overseas students bring - in fees, rent, food and CDs - but also on the notion that it is in the UK's strategic interests to educate people from abroad because they go home and promote Britain.His initiative bore fruit Thousands of overseas students flocked to these shores But this year the stream appears to have been checked. "I can live with that, but I feel for my colleagues who have built their plans on larger figures and found they have not come through," says Coyne.Higher education is a £10bn business to the United Kingdom's export market. The loss of a dozen students from this programme is deeply worrying, though not catastrophic, because Derby does not rely on overseas students. Altogether, the university is 50 down on the number of foreign students it might have expected to get this autumn - 350 as against 400. But it's all hearsay."To try to get to the root of the matter, he dispatched to Beijing a member of staff, who has yet to report back. People say it's to do with the fact that the British embassy in China moved to a paper-based system for visa applicants, requiring information to be presented in a particular way.
"They get their visas, they come here, and they do well." But this year, for no apparent reason, he says, something went wrong with their visa applications "Two-thirds had their visas refused," he says "We don't know why that happened. "Each year we get modest numbers from Dong Cheng," says Professor John Coyne, the vice- chancellor. These students spend two years in China studying English and other subjects before arriving in Derby to join the HND programme. In addition, and perhaps surprisingly, it has several hundred overseas students, who travel halfway around the world for a chance to acquire new skills. In this group are 20 from China, who come via a partnership with Dong Cheng technical vocational school in Beijing. With its 25,000 students and campus scattered around the Peak District, Derby is the quintessential local university, serving a community of young people but also part-timers and mature students who want to better themselves. We close them and spend £25m turning them into academies.Interviewer: Who goes to the academies now the council tenants are in the leafy suburbs? Parr: Oh, the middle classes who can't get into their local schools any more..
What would George Parr, the fictional civil servant on Bremner, Bird and Fortune, make of the Government's latest wheeze on school admissions? Interviewer: So you're going to provide free buses for the children from council estates to go to better schools in the leafy suburbs? Parr: Yes. Interviewer: What happens to the schools they've left behind? Parr: Ah, they fail. But some heads of science are worried that if there are problems with funding and staffing, they will be squeezed down to just the core.". "There are alternative paths, something for everyone," says deputy head Howard Jones."We've worked hard as a department to make science accessible and relevant," says Jones "It's about doing and remembering The new courses are moving towards this. There are huge opportunities to be flexible and creative with them You can play to your strengths. In the year they'll make soap, boil up orange peel to extract essential oils, and look at bike gears.The school believes the new national programme of science, coming in next autumn, offers great flexibility.
