Equitable access to mobility, new models of education partnerships and higher education as a societal good took centre stage at the Going Global Asia Pacific conference 2022 held in Singapore.

Executive director of think tank IISS-Asia, James Crabtree, warned about the “rise and stall” of globalisation and remarked that, despite Biden and Xi meeting during the G20 Summit, the underlying conditions of US-China relationship “are not good”.

Stakeholders began the conference with statements urging the UK sector to “get China ready” as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to limit travel to and from the country.

Crabtree pointed to the slowdown of “hyper globalisation”, which he said peaked at around the time of the global financial crisis 2007-08.

“It hasn’t collapsed, it’s sort of tapered off into a flatline,” he said. “We’re not globalising anymore in the way that we were in the high period…

“It’s quite easy to imagine some things that might happen that could prompt a much sharper form of decoupling. In this part of the world, we talk about decoupling, particularly with respect to China, but the Russia-Ukraine war should have showed us all exactly how quickly a process of disorderly decoupling can [result] in the event of military conflict.”

President of Imperial College London, Hugh Brady, noted the importance of higher education to engage politicians.

“The onus is on us to remind them of the benefits of internationalisation and global cooperation”

“The onus is on us to recognise the pressures that politicians are under and to redouble our efforts to engage with them and to remind them of the benefits of internationalisation and global cooperation at those various levels,” he said.

“[We need to] frame the debate in a way that [politicians] understand that there is a value or imperative of some level of engagement… If we believe in the principles of globalisation, internationalisation, partnership, now is the time we need to redouble it and not to back up.”

And despite geopolitical concerns, delegates at the conference identified ways in which equity in international higher education can be achieved.

UNESCO’s Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education, designed to enhance academic mobility globally and complement regional agreements such as the Lisbon Convention, Tokyo Convention, Addis Convention and Buenos Aires Convention, has been ratified by 18 countries, below the 20 needed for it to come into force.

“You can develop MoUs with other countries on the equivalency of qualifications among your countries,” said Libing Wang, chief of section for educational innovation and skills development at UNESCO APAC.

“The main difference is that this is a platform that the UNESCO’s created for countries to sit together to agree on certain protocols and the values and principles.”

Sir Steve Smith, the UK’s international education champion, noted that the recognition of qualifications “turns out to be one of the things that takes most time”, everywhere the UK works.

“Anything like this that makes it easier in principle should be very, very welcome,” he said.

However, in the APAC region, countries may be hesitant to sign the document due to language disadvantages and the lack of a current regional “harmonisation process” on qualification recognition, N.V. Varghese, vice chancellor of India’s National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, noted.

Digital means of delivery were also focused on as a way to reach people unable to participate in international education opportunities for financial or geographical reasons.

“Digital is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean it’s not problematic. There are issues of digital inclusion,” Maddalaine Ansell, director of education at British Council, said.

Access to digital transnational education often comes up in conversations Ansell has, she continued.

“That’s partly about finding a price point that means TNE can be offered to people beyond the elite who perhaps couldn’t afford the cost of travelling overseas to complete university education,” she explained.

“And typically, [other] issues are around quality assurance…

“How can you be really sure that the course delivered remotely, possibly to students who might be taking it in their second language, is really delivering the benefits that are hoped for?

“I think that’s a challenge that – working together – higher education institutions should really accept because of the potential benefits of doing a lot more TNE.”

There is also a “regulation lag” around governments accepting online and distance provisions, Leighton Ernsberger, British Council’s business director East Asia, added.

“[The sector should be] increasing exposure, working with the regulator, working with the government to expose, to innovate together.”

Along with digital, shortening the length of study abroad experiences overseas was also proposed to increase equity.

With around 8% of UK students joining outbound mobility, the Go International campaign missed its target of 13% outbound by 2020 as a result of the pandemic. The 8% number remains “just too small for UK HE”, deputy pro vice chancellor and associate vice president (International) at the University of Sussex, Richard Follett, posited.

“[Resurrecting the 13% target] must be our goal coming out of the pandemic,” he said. And the fact that wealthy and middle-class students are disproportionately represented among outbound student cohorts still needs to be addressed.

“Resurrecting the 13% target must be our goal coming out of the pandemic”

“Around 4.5% of students from a black and Asian background undertake a study abroad experience,” he said, adding that the international education strategy has the expansion of outbound mobility at the heart.

The Turing program offers 50% of its funding to underrepresented backgrounds, he reminded.

More widely, gender gaps across global higher education must be addressed.

The “leaky pipeline” in academia is not uncommon in many parts of the world, president of Singapore Management University, Lily Kong, highlighted.

“That pyramid that we are all so familiar with, with fewer and fewer women as we move further up the hierarchy, is absolutely the case in Singapore,” she told delegates.

The bonds that men build during their national service in Singapore, along with a “premium” given to STEM – a “male-dominated speciality” – can limit career progression, she said.

“In my own appraisal, I was told, ‘you’re really wonderful in so many ways, but you know what your weakness is? You’re not a STEM person’. A decision I took at 15 to go into social sciences made it so much more difficult swimming against the tide. I’m not a STEM person, I don’t have the networks.

“There is so much that needs to be done. First of all, attracting women into academia in the first place… Do we have women on selection panels? Do we have unconscious bias training? If and when we get women into academia, how can we support them in their work?” Kong asked.

Ansell also touched on equity in partnership as a key theme.

“Over the last decades, there’s been a trend of moving away from North-South partnerships, where the North is somehow in the lead or somehow gets an unfair share of the benefit of the partnership, to explore what a more equitable partnership might look like.

“There’s a lot of appetite from universities around the globe to find a way of being more equitable in education.”

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University pathway provider NCUK has partnered with Beaconhouse International College in Pakistan to deliver its foundation year course in three cities across the country. 

Beaconhouse International College, with campuses in Islamabad, Lahore and Faisalabad, was established to deliver transnational higher education to students in Pakistan.

The new partnership will support BIC’s students to progress to an NCUK partner university, with the foundation year course covering English language and academic skills. The foundation year program at BIC will begin in 2023.

NCUK has over 45 partner universities located in countries including the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and Canada. 

The new partnership is part of a wider initiative between NCUK and Oxbridge Digital in Pakistan.

As part of the collaboration, Oxbridge Digital is finding and recommending educational institutions to join the NCUK Delivery Partner network and deliver NCUK qualifications across a range of locations in Pakistan.

Speaking at the launch of the initiative, Usman Akram, managing director of Oxbridge Digital said, “Since the day we opened our doors in Pakistan, Oxbridge Digital has been partnering with UK Higher Education Institutions to empower students by providing them with opportunities that are both accessible and affordable. 

“Study Centres in Pakistan play an integral role in changing lives of the students here”

“We’ve taken a step closer to achieving this goal with our new partnering with NCUK. We are looking forward to working with them to grow the number of Study Centres in Pakistan that play an integral role in changing lives of the students here.”

NCUK announced a new partnership with Royal Colleseum School earlier this year. 

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UK universities must prepare to reengage with Chinese counterparts and recognise the rising importance of collaboration, the British Council has said.

The call comes after UK prime minister earlier this week warned that the “golden era” of relations with the country had reached an end.

“We’re taking a longer-term view on China, strengthening our resilience and protecting our economic security,” UK prime minister Rishi Sunak told attendees at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on November 28, adding that the UK will “evolve” its approach to China.

It will focus on “robust pragmatism” and the UK will look to deepen ties with “like-minded allies around the world”.

“Let’s be clear, the so-called ‘golden era’ is over,” he said.

For Matt Burney, British Council China director, the unsurprising statement could have been worse.

“It’s quite useful really for Rishi Sunak to draw a line under it by talking in terms of ‘robust pragmatism’. This is a lot more helpful – and meaningful in terms of safe engagement – than some of the rhetoric that could have been used around, for example, defining China as purely a threat,” he told The PIE.

The golden era of relations is widely accepted as the time under former PM David Cameron, who was in power in the UK from 2010 to 2016.

In comparison, some parts of the bilateral relationship are now stronger, according to Burney. While political relationships have traditionally been “episodic”, the education relationship is different.

“I point you to the education relationship, which is as strong as ever… [We have] to be really very careful about defining our bilateral relationship purely through the lens of political rhetoric,” he said.

“We’ve got to look at the UK-China relationship beyond the political. When we look at it through the lens of trade and of culture and education and the people-to-people side of things, it’s actually as strong as ever it’s been.”

Director of the UK Research Innovation in China Daniel Brooker agreed that the rhetoric needs decoupling from reality, in a session at British Council’s Going Global conference in Singapore.

“It’s important often just to remind people around the statistics of why our relationship with China, certainly from our research, is too important to ignore, too big to fail,” he said.

“China is now a science superpower, it’s the world’s second biggest spender on R&D, it has 25% of the world’s R&D workforce. It has spent heavily on increasing its research budgets over the last 5-10 years. It’s already reaching its 2.4% target, percent of GDP, which is the UK aspiration.”

A rough calculation by the British Council has estimated that in 2021, Chinese students – in tuition fees and living costs alone – contributed some £5.4bn to the UK economy, Leina Shi, director education China, added.

“Data shows that the overall pie for Chinese students studying abroad is shrinking. However, the UK has really proved popular above our weight, so actually our number of inbound students from China has been increasing, but on the price of perhaps some of our other competitors,” she said, noting in particular the US.

“This is an opportunity to really get smart in working with China”

“It would be naive to think that China is risk free. Our interlocutors are keen to remain as apolitical as possible,” Burney added.

For UK universities, now is the time to “really get China ready”, and build up the institutional readiness to engage, Shi continued.

“This is an opportunity to really get smart in working with China… [and] for universities to build up their own expertise to understand how to work with China.

“The most important [thing] is to recognise China’s strengths as a collaborator for research. The rise of China in the world rankings of universities presents valuable opportunities in postgraduate and research collaborations for UK universities. I think the next era is moving from student recruitment into research collaboration.”

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The British Council celebrated excellence in innovation in English language teaching and learning at the 20th iteration of the ELTons Awards, with host Michael Rosen paying tribute to both teachers and students.

British author, poet and broadcaster, Rosen, renowned for his work in children’s literature, addressed educators gathered in London, and those watching online during the hybrid event on 30 November.

“I believe in every educator in this room and outside these doors. I believe in everyone making the books, online lessons, video games, mobile apps, virtual immersive worlds, and more. Every single one of you is important. You are vital,” he said.

“Teachers touch the lives of people. Let’s remember that. As you help rebuild students’ confidence, as they find their feet again in what is really a very uncertain world, your role has never been more important.

“It takes courage to learn a new language, one that’s different from your mother tongue,” said Rosen, who is currently learning Yiddish – the language of his Jewish ancestors.

“It takes a special kind of courage to teach in another language” Rosen added.

“The English language belongs to the people who speak it, who learnt it, who learn in it, who work using it, who travel with it. English belongs to the people who use it to find safe passage across borders or to make lifelong friends or partners. If you’ve told a pretty good joke in English and got a laugh or woke up having dreamt in English, it belongs to you.”

Thank you for asking me to host the #ELTons , @BritishCouncil last night. It was an honour to be amongst so many great practitioners in the field of English language teaching and learning. I’ve already ordered one of the books written by finalists!

— Michael Rosen (@MichaelRosenYes) December 1, 2022

Stevie Spring, chairman at the British Council, reminisced on the “tremendous change” the sector has undergone since the first ELTons Awards in 2002.

“We are teaching English at a younger and younger ages and English is booming as the language used at universities all over the world. Universal design practices have revolutionised the way materials are crafted, and all of our teaching practices have become ever more inclusive,” said Spring.

During the ceremony, previous winners presented five award categories, two commendations and the Outstanding Achievement Award.

Winners in the five categories, determined by an independent judging panel, included Helbling Languages for the Innovation in Learner resources award, DELTA publishing for the Innovation in Teacher Resources award, University of Dayton Publishing for the Excellence in Course Innovation award, EF Education First for the Digital Innovation award and Learning Unlimited with Fotosynthesis for the Local Innovation award.

Two special commendations were also given to chosen finalists. Three organisations were commended for their efforts in equality, diversity and inclusion – May Moo and Me, Classroom Practice: English as a Lingua France and Dau Dau.

The commendation for Environmental Sustainability and Climate Action was award to Pearson English with BBC Studios for its ‘Speak out for Sustainability’ program and the University of Dayton Publishing for ‘Brain Juice’ along with National Geographic Learning, Cengage Learning EMEA Ltd with Empatico for its program ‘Lift’.

Finally, professor and author, Penny Ur, was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award. Ur thanked friends, teachers, critics, students, her grandchildren and colleagues who she learnt from since she began teaching in the 1960s. She called it “serendipity” that she began teaching in era when the English language began evolving into the language of international communication, as it is known today.

In the #ELTons TV studio with Penny Ur, winner of the 2022 ELTons Outstanding Achievement Award pic.twitter.com/MftKbxOzui

— British Council ELTons (@bceltons) November 30, 2022

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