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Welcome to our Summer 2021 Newsletter!
Dear All
We hope you are managing to enjoy your Summer, wherever you are based. We send our best wishes and, as always, hope that our articles help to keep you informed about the international education market.
Latest articles from UK Education Guide
Do rankings really matter?
A review of the value of school rankings aimed at Chinese parents, do have a read!
thestandard.com.hk/section-news/fc/14/231610/Do-rankings-really-matter?
How are schools coping with the increased burden of Visa applications, post Brexit
ukeducationguide.com/how-are-uk-boarding-schools-coping-with-the-increased-visa-burden-post-brexit
UKI Student & School Forum launched
thepienews.com/news/uki-student-school-forum-launched/
Citizenship Award
We are delighted to announce 2 worthy winners of our summer award
 Zoia Okulova, aged 17 is an international full boarder from France currently in Year 13 studying the IB at Felsted School. Zoia has embraced every area of school life, but has been particularly involved with the Felsted charity team, notably the Teach Uganda initiative. This charity aims to educate young people in the poorest areas of Uganda. Safi Coffee, a charity initiative that imports Ugandan coffee to sell in the UK, with all profits going back to Uganda to fund education for children in the poorest areas has been embraced by Felsted and Zoia has helped to open a Safi Coffee shop on the school site, liaising with other schools in the sales and marketing of the coffee and helping pack up charity Christmas hampers with Safi Coffee to sell as gifts to the Felsted community. Zoia comments; “Working closely with the charity Teach Uganda, we organised social awareness campaigns across our community to convey that every child should receive the education they deserve."
 Charlotte Price leads the The DLD College London student council and she explains herself what this entails: "We have a designated charity team that mainly focuses on our outreach support, we aim to support at least one charity per half term and go into the community every fortnight. We have supported various charities through the year including; Evelina charity & Movember Foundation. Another charity we support is the Waterloo food bank and I have worked closely with them ever since I joined DLD. Just after Halloween, every year I bring in an autumnal decorated trolley and fill it with food. This year was my most successful year due to many people having leftover goods from COVID. The picture above is from one of the pick-ups over the harvest period we had three pick-ups of food this year - about 5 crates of food each time.
International Education Round-up
Peer sniffs ‘real chance’ of success on UK contract cheating law
From Times Higher Education: “The backbench peer driving forward legislation to outlaw essay mills in the UK has said that the bill now has a ‘real chance’ of succeeding... Speaking at the Higher Education Policy Institute’s annual conference last month, education secretary Gavin Williamson said that the government would ‘like to work with Lord Storey to see if we can deliver’ a law against contract cheating...According to data from the Quality Assurance Agency, there were 932 contract cheating websites operating in the UK earlier this year, up from 881 in October 2020 and 635 in June 2018."
View the full article from Times Higher Education [subscription required]
UK student satisfaction collapses as pandemic drags on
From Times Higher Education: ”Nearly one in three students at UK universities considered quitting their course during the pandemic, says a major new study that reveals the extent of undergraduate dissatisfaction with online teaching. … Reversing a trend that had seen undergraduate degree satisfaction rise steadily in recent years, this year’s Student Academic Experience Survey found 44 per cent of students felt their course represented ‘poor or very poor value’ compared with 29 per cent with that perception in 2019. Only 27 per cent felt their course was ‘good or very good’ value for money – down from 41 per cent in 2019, says the report published on 24 June.”
View the full article from Times Higher Education [subscription required]
Imperial head: no more ‘dull lectures in crowded auditoriums’
From Times Higher Education: “University students will no longer accept ‘dull lectures in crowded auditoriums,’ according to the president of Imperial College London. Giving the institution’s annual address on 2 June, Alice Gast was due to say that the rapid switch online since the start of the pandemic and the move to ‘multi-mode education’ had given universities a taste of their ‘ability to enrich the educational experience for our students … The best and brightest students will not accept an education fashioned around dull lectures in a crowded auditorium,’ she was set to say.”
View the full article from Times Higher Education [subscription required]
Cambridge will offer £50,000 bursaries to poorest students
From The Times Higher Education: “One of Cambridge’s wealthiest colleges is creating the country’s most generous bursary scheme as it tries to plug a brain drain of bright teenagers leaving the country for Ivy League institutions. St John’s College will offer £50,000 per student for up to 40 undergraduates from lower-income backgrounds so they can graduate debt free. It claims to be the UK’s most generous scheme to fully fund tuition fees and living costs at university, and the college hopes to offer it indefinitely.”
View the full article from Times Higher Education [subscription required]
Can universities help save the UK high street?
From Times Higher Education: “With UK town and city centres pitched into existential crisis by the rise of online shopping and now the pandemic, could universities be among the saviours? There are some who think that the University of Gloucestershire’s purchase of a former department store in Gloucester city centre, to ‘create dual-use facilities for the community and the university’, could offer a national model. Such moves are seen as having the potential not just to breathe new life into high streets, but also to strengthen universities’ appeal to adult learners and bolster their civic missions – at a time when universities face their own existential questions about their ability to connect with the public.”
View the full article from Times Higher Education [subscription required]
Campuses fear losing 10 per cent of fees as Europeans stay away
From Times Higher Education: “Some English universities could lose up to 10 per cent of their fee income if forecasts about the loss of revenue from European Union students come to pass, Times Higher Education analysis suggests.Latest figures on institutional finances from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) show that fees from EU students represented about 6 per cent of income for the sector last year, but at a few institutions the figure was much higher, including four that relied on EU students for more than a fifth of their fee revenue.”
View the full article from Times Higher Education [subscription required]
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