International Education Strategy Governance Group minutes: January 2025

Attendees and apologies

• (Chair) Mr Dey, Minister for Higher and Further Education and Minister for Veterans
• Gareth Williams, Prosper
• Neville Wylie, Connected Scotland
• Nick Forsyth, University of Aberdeen
• Peter Brown, British Council
• Rachel Sandison, University of Glasgow
• Stephen Decent, RKEC
• Sir Steve Smith, UKG International Education Champion
• Wendy Alexander, Scottish Government Trade and Investment Envoy
• James McKean, Colleges Scotland

Apologies

• Adam Reid, Scottish Government
• James Miller, Universities Scotland
• Roy Gardner, City of Glasgow College

Items and actions

Welcome and apologies

The Minister for Higher and Further Education; and Minister for Veterans extended a welcome to members and welcomed Sir Steve Smith to his first meeting.

Minutes of last meeting and actions arising

Members agreed accuracy of the minutes.

An Actions Update paper was circulated to members prior to the meeting.

UK Government International Education Strategy (IES) refresh update

The Minister invited Sir Steve Smith to give an update on the UKG IES Review.

Sir Steve Smith thanked the Minister and members for the invitation to join this group.

Appointed in June 2020 to the role of International Education Champion to implement the UKG IES that was published the year before. Now at the mid-point of the strategy and have made significant progress towards the two main objectives on international student recruitment and export targets.

The refresh of the IES provides an opportunity for UK Ministers to consider the priorities in response to increasing demand internationally for specialist training, skills input and the role of technology.

Data collection and wide stakeholder engagement has been taking place to gather views from the sectors, government departments and the devolved administrations.

Officials of the Scottish and UK Governments met earlier in January with further engagement with Scottish stakeholders taking place at the end of January.

The review is expected to conclude in Spring 2025.

Discussions took place around the strategic priorities, target setting and the specific focus of the refreshed IES.

The value of the Scottish IES was highlighted and it was noted that Scotland is well-represented on international visits, particularly as Scotland has a great product to sell to the world.

The importance of collaboration between Scottish Government and UKG was agreed with the recognition of the importance of the UK IES recognising the ambitions and priorities of all four nations.

A discussion took place around: migration rules; considering how others see the UK; what the barriers / challenges are such as the Visa process; accommodation; the importance of increasing activity around Trans-National Education (TNE); the need for regional variations; English Language Testing and flexibility for universities on how they choose to run that; importance of diversification/de-risking and not relying on a limited number of countries; it was noted that the Scottish IES has TNE as one of its key themes and it would be helpful if this was also reinforced in the UK IES.

Sir Steve Smith advised that the issues discussed have been captured in the engagement discussions that have taken place to date and are being reflected in the ongoing work around data gathering on the barriers and challenges to attracting international students. It was agreed that TNE should have more prominence in the refreshed UK IES.

SG International Education Strategy (IES) Annual Report

Minister presented the draft IES annual report to the group and noted how pleased he was in the amount of work that has been done so far.

Members were happy with the draft annual report and the Minister thanked officials for the efforts captured in the report. The report is due for publication in the Spring.

SG IES Year 2 priorities and risks to success

Minister asked for input on how we build on the success so far and looking ahead at priorities and risks for Year 2.

Members discussed the proposed actions and agreed:
•    continuing to invest in brand assets, Brand Scotland and destination marketing for Scotland to tell Scotland’s story, including further development of the Study in Scotland site to improve functionality around data on landing pages, the employability proposition, scholarship propositions
•    to build on Scotland’s Migration Service (SMS) around employability and increase promotion of SMS within the sector, with students, partners and in particular employers
•    the importance of increased activity around employability and entrepreneurship
•    to improve graduate outcome data which may require commissioning bespoke data for Scotland to help understand where most impact can be made and help with policy decisions
•    increase collaboration with colleges to support the realisation of their international ambitions

Discussion took place around the migration issues, visa requirements, and how to work together to increase the retention of graduates in Scotland. The increasing demand from international markets for skills training was highlighted.

Potential initiatives for colleges and universities to collaborate with UKG around requests from countries on health training programmes for doctors and nurses, whilst also working within the NHS.

Brand Scotland reported that initial results for Destination marketing campaign (January 2025 to date) indicate a 900% increase of traffic to the Study in Scotland pages versus January 2024. There were 12.5k people coming to the site in the first 20 days of January 2025 (noting there was no paid activity this time last year). Early indications showing that campaign activity is having an effect. A fuller report will be issued at the end of January to this group and relevant stakeholders.

In summary, the Minister asked for members’ top priorities. Members agreed that those identified in the paper were the right areas to concentrate on. The value of scholarship funding was raised and the Minister highlighted the positive impact of such funding, for example the Scottish Educational Exchange Programme (SEEP) can have on students and staff, the importance it has in rebuilding international relationships and noted that it is important that this is continued alongside the international marketing. All agreed that in Year 2 of the IES, the work should go further and faster in order to achieve the impact of the ambition.

Any other business

Date of next meeting is 23 April 2025.

Key actions

•    SG officials and IES Governance Group members to feed back points raised under the UKG IES Refresh agenda item to UKG officials through the stakeholder meeting to be held on 28 January, to ensure they are included in the strategy development
•    Brand Scotland to provide a roadmap for the marketing campaign, including timelines, beyond this initial burst of activity, for the remainder of 2024-25, by end of January 2025. Secretariat to share with IES members
•    Brand Scotland to issue a report at the end of January 2025 on results for current destination marketing campaign. Secretariat to share with IES members
•    Secretariat to co-ordinate meeting between SG and UKG Health officials to explore opportunities around potential international health training programmes