South Africa’s education system is to go through a radical overhaul in order to adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Under the Framework for Skills for a Changing World, which will be rolled out over the next six years, educators and learners are being trained to respond to emerging technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence.
Several new technology subjects and specialisations will be introduced, including technical mathematics and technical sciences, maritime sciences, aviation studies, mining sciences and aquaponics.
To expand participation in technical streams, President Cyril Ramaphosa said several ordinary public schools will be transformed into technical high schools.
The President made these announcements at his second State of the Nation Address in Parliament on Thursday.
In addition to this, government will provide every school child in South Africa with digital workbooks and textbooks on a tablet device.
Already, 90% of textbooks in high enrolment subjects across all grades and all workbooks have been digitised.
“We will start with those schools that have been historically most disadvantaged and are located in the poorest communities, including multigrade, multiphase, farm and rural schools,” the President said.
ECD centres to fall under Basic Education
Government’s plan will also cut across Early Childhood Development (ECD).
With over 700 000 children accessing ECD in the last financial year, President Ramaphosa announced that the responsibility for ECD centres will migrate from Social Development to Basic Education.
Another critical priority will be improving reading comprehension in the first years of school by expanding the availability of early reading resources across the foundation phase of schooling.
“This is essential in equipping children to succeed in education, in work and in life – and it is possibly the single most important factor in overcoming poverty, unemployment and inequality,” the President said.
The department’s early grade reading studies have demonstrated the impact that a dedicated package of reading resources, expert reading coaches and lesson plans can have on reading outcomes.
Expanding access to higher education
Turning to government’s commitment to the right of access to higher education for the poor, the President said free higher education for qualifying first-year students will continue to be rolled out.
The scheme is being phased in over a five-year period until all undergraduate students who qualify in terms of the criteria can benefit.
Another key focus area for government will be stabilising the business processes of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme so it is properly capacitated to carry out its critical role in supporting eligible students.
“We call on student representatives and university authorities to work together to find solutions to the challenges that students are facing,” the President said, citing the latest clashes at the Durban University of Technology.
Students have been protesting that institutions of higher learning should allow those with historic debt to register along with the improvement of specific residences, and for allowances to be paid.
The protest saw students locking horns with the private security hired by the institution.
Twenty-year-old Mlungisi Madonsela was caught in the crossfire and died in hospital after succumbing to his wounds.
The President called on law enforcement agencies to thoroughly investigate the incident.
“We are concerned about developments on some campuses this week, especially reports of violence and intimidation,” the President said before extending condolences to Madonsela’s family
Source of the notice: https://techfinancials.co.za/2019/02/08/south-africa-education-to-adapt-to-digital-revolution/
Schools tailored to girls’ needs in northern Ghana are removing barriers, encouraging girls to become independent thinkers, and motivating them to pursue higher education.
The average girl in Ghana only receives four years of education. Early marriage, pregnancy, poverty, and sexual harassment are all obstacles that force girls to drop out of school before the end of junior high.
At Oxfam, we know educating girls is critical to improving their lives. Each additional year of primary school a girl attends increases her future wages by 10 to 20 percent. Educated girls also are likely to marry later and have fewer children, and their children are also more likely to thrive.
With that in mind, we partnered with Ghana Education Service, the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba district, and local communities to build a junior high school in the northern province of Sawla to tackle barriers preventing girls from finishing their educations. We aimed to demonstrate that safe, girl-friendly schools would empower girls and motivate them to stay in school—and maybe even pursue higher education.
That school became a model for girls’ success in Ghana.
Laying the groundwork
The first Girls Model Junior High School opened in Sawla in 2008, targeting girls from the poorest families. All 28 enrolled girls passed their final exams, and 24 went on to attend senior high school. In 2013, a sister school was established in the Kpandai district. By March 2018—a decade after the project began—there were 44 schools in districts across northern Ghana. They are all financed and administered by local authorities.
“It makes me feel more confident in myself when there are no boys around,» says Haddisah Ibrahim, 15, a student at Savelugu Girls Model Junior High School. Photo: Lotte Ærsøe/Oxfam IBIS
Haddisah Ibrahim, 15, learned about the Savelugu Girls Model Junior High School when a teacher came to her village. “He told us about the new school that was opening—that it was a good place where we could learn a lot. I wanted to go, and my father agreed.”
She’s now a student and likes that her school is girls-only. “It makes me feel more confident in myself when there are no boys around,” she says. “We don’t have to put up with all the noise the boys at my old school used to make.”
Her father can’t always afford to pay for her schoolbooks, but Haddisah isn’t discouraged. She borrows books from her classmates when she needs to. Hadissa is committed to finishing school and becoming a doctor. “One day I will return to this area and help treat the sick people in my home town,” she says.
A different style of teaching
Tackling endemic problems requires innovative solutions, so the schools have taken a novel approach to pedagogy. Teaching is based on learner-centered methodologies, a concept that has previously not applied very often by teachers in this part of Ghana, who lacked the know-how to implement it. Discussions and group work are core elements. The girls form study groups in the evenings. Parents are invited to support the girls’ education through school management committees.
Computers are integrated into lessons, and teachers are trained to encourage the girls to participate actively in the classroom, and even to challenge teachers with individual points of view. These schools go beyond the national curriculum to address sexual health and life skills.
Gladys Asare Akosu is a teacher at Savelugu Girls Model School. “Traditionally, girls’ education is not considered important in this part of Ghana. Many people believe that a girl should just get married as early as possible—they don’t see much sense in wasting time and money on the girls going to school,” she says. “That’s extremely unfair.”
For her, teaching here is different from what she’s used to. There are fewer students in each class, which makes it easier to focus on each child’s needs.
“As teachers, we do a lot to involve the students instead of just lecturing. We encourage them to participate in discussions,” she says. “Some of the girls were very shy in the beginning, but now they raise their hands and take part in the discussions. It is amazing to witness such a change in a young girl.”
Akosu knows adolescence is a fragile time for girls. Teenage pregnancies and child marriages are far too common in this part of Ghana, and consequently many girls drop out before they graduate high school. Compounding that is the fact that many of her students come from poor families and live far away.
Parental support is integral to the schools’ success. If a girl misses more than a day or two of school, the headmistress gets in touch with the family. Akosu says it’s not uncommon for educators to go on home visits to prevent girls from dropping out.
“I really enjoy being part of the change that we are making here,” she says. “Hopefully our work will help eradicate the old prejudices toward girls’ education. These girls just have so much to offer.”
Shafaw Mohammed, 15, pictured with her mother Zinatu Alhassan, says her favorite subject is English. «I dream of becoming a journalist when I finish my studies.» Photo: Lotte Ærsøe/Oxfam IBIS
Increasing the chance for success
Ninety-five percent of the girls registered at the Girls Model Junior High Schools have graduated, and the majority are continuing their education. In the schools’ surrounding communities, girls constitute just 10% of the children who graduate from junior high school.
In total, more than 1,642 girls are now enrolled at the model schools, and the goal is to continue scaling up.
”The Girls Model School is a baby for us in Savelugu,” says Municipal Chief Executive Hajia Adishetu Seidu. “When we educate girls, we break the cycle of poverty. Women take care of their families, they share everything they earn, and they make sure that their own children also go to school.”
Source of the article: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/creating-a-model-for-girls-education-in-ghana/
Politicians promised that expansion would produce jobs and social mobility. Neither has materialised
In any other area it would be called mis-selling. Given the sheer numbers of those duped, a scandal would erupt and the guilty parties would be forced to make amends. In this case, they’d include some of the most eminent politicians in Britain.
But we don’t call it mis-selling. We refer to it instead as “going to uni”. Over the next few days, about half a million people will start as full-time undergraduates. Perhaps your child will be among them, bearing matching Ikea crockery and a fleeting resolve to call home every week.
They are making one of the biggest purchases of their lives, shelling out more on tuition fees and living expenses than one might on a sleek new Mercedes, or a deposit on a London flat. Many will emerge with a costly degree that fulfils few of the promises made in those glossy prospectuses. If mis-selling is the flogging of a pricey product with not a jot of concern about its suitability for the buyer, then that is how the establishment in politics and in higher education now treat university degrees. The result is that tens of thousands of young graduates begin their careers having already been swindled as soundly as the millions whose credit card companies foisted useless payment protection insurance on them.
Rather than jumping through hoop after hoop of exams and qualifications, they’d have been better off with parents owning a home in London. That way, they’d have had somewhere to stay during internships and then a source of equity with which to buy their first home – because ours is an era that preaches social mobility, even while practising a historic concentration of wealth. Our new graduates will learn that the hard way.
To say as much amounts to whistling in the wind. With an annual income of £33bn, universities in the UK are big business, and a large lobby group. They are perhaps the only industry whose growth has been explicitly mandated by prime ministers of all stripes, from Tony Blair to Theresa May. It was Blair who fed the university sector its first steroids, by pledging that half of all young Britons would go into higher education. That sweeping target was set with little regard for the individual needs of teenagers – how could it be? Sub-prime brokers in Florida were more exacting over their clients’ circumstances. It was based instead on two promises that have turned out to be hollow.
Promise number one was that degrees mean inevitably bigger salaries. This was a way of selling tuition fees to voters. Blair’s education secretary, David Blunkett, asked: “Why should it be the woman getting up at 5 o’clock to do a cleaning job who pays for the privileges of those earning a higher income while they make no contribution towards it?” When David Cameron’s lot wanted to jack up fees, they claimed a degree was a “phenomenal investment”.
Both parties have marketed higher education as if it were some tat on a television shopping channel. Across Europe, from Germany to Greece, including Scotland, university education is considered a public good and is either free or cheap to students. Graduates in England, however, are lumbered with some of the highest student debt in the world.
Yet shove more and more students through university and into the workforce and – hey presto! – the wage premium they command will inevitably drop. Research shows that male graduates of 23 universities still earn less on average than non-graduates a whole decade after going into the workforce.
Britain manufactures graduates by the tonne, but it doesn’t produce nearly enough graduate-level jobs. Nearly half of all graduates languish in jobs that don’t require graduate skills, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. In 1979, only 3.5% of new bank and post office clerks had a degree; today it is 35% – to do a job that often pays little more than the minimum wage.
Promise number two was that expanding higher education would break down class barriers. Wrong again. At the top universities that serve as gatekeepers to the top jobs, Oxbridge, Durham, Imperial and others, private school pupils comprise anywhere up to 40% of the intake. Yet only 7% of children go to private school. Factor in part-time and mature students, and the numbers from disadvantaged backgrounds are actually dropping. Nor does university close the class gap: Institute for Fiscal Studies research shows that even among those doing the same subject at the same university, rich students go on to earn an average of 10% more each year, every year, than those from poor families.
Far from providing opportunity for all, higher education is itself becoming a test lab for Britain’s new inequality. Consider today’s degree factory: a place where students pay dearly to be taught by some lecturer paid by the hour, commuting between three campuses, yet whose annual earnings may not amount to £9,000 a year – while a cadre of university management rake in astronomical sums.
Thus is the template set for the world of work. Can’t find an internship in politics or the media in London that pays a wage? That will cost you more than £1,000 a month in travel and rent. Want to buy your first home? In the mid-80s, 62% of adults under 35 living in the south-east owned their own home. That has now fallen to 32%. Needless to say, the best way to own your own home is to have parents rich enough to help you out.
Over the past four decades, British governments have relentlessly pushed the virtues of skilling up and getting on. Yet today wealth in Britain is so concentrated that the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson, believes “inheritance is probably the most crucial factor in determining a person’s overall wealth since Victorian times”.
Margaret Thatcher’s acolytes promised to create a classless society, and they were quite right: Britain is instead becoming a caste society, one in which where you were born determines ever more where you end up.
For two decades, Westminster has used universities as its magic answer for social mobility. Ministers did so with the connivance of highly paid vice-chancellors, and in the process they have trashed much of what was good about British higher education. What should be sites for speculative inquiry and critical thinking have instead turned into businesses that speculate on property deals, criticise academics who aren’t publishing in the right journals – and fail spectacularly to engage with the serious social and economic problems that confront the UK right now. As for the graduates, they largely wind up taking the same place in the queue as their parents – only this time with an expensive certificate detailing their newfound expertise.
For everyone’s sake, let us declare this experiment a failure. It is high time that higher education was treated again as a public good, as Jeremy Corbyn recognises with his pledge to scrap tuition fees. But Labour also needs to expand vocational education. And if it really wants to increase social mobility and reduce unfairness, it will need to come up with tax policies fit for the age of inheritance.
Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/20/university-factory-failed-tony-blair-social-mobility-jobs
Africa/ South Africa/ 07.01.2018/By: Natasha Robinson/ Source: www.thesouthafrican.com.
What will it take to improve teacher quality and professionalism in the country?
Half of all South African pupils who attended school for five years can’t do basic calculations. This is according to a 2015 TIMMS report on mathematics achievements among Grade 5 learners in South Africa.
At the same time, it’s calculated that 10% of the country’s teachers are absent from school each day, while researchfound that 79% of South African Grade 6 mathematics teachers were classified as having content knowledge levels below the level at which they were teaching.
Given that teacher quality is one of the biggest factors determining the learning outcomes of students, what will it take to improve teacher quality and professionalism in the country?
Numerous suggestions have been floated. But one idea has recently generated particular interest among education departments, statutory bodies, and academia – the introduction of “teacher professional standards”. These can be broadly defined as a set of common standards that include the professional knowledge, skills and conduct that characterise good teaching.
Their development began in the US in the late 1980s. It was stimulated by the view that higher expectations for student learning could be accomplished only by higher expectations of teaching quality. In the South African context, teacher standards are a response to a lack of teacher accountability. This has been identified as a cause of the poor quality of South African education.
The basic premise of teacher standards is that if you expect more from teachers, don’t allow them into the classroom until they’ve met a basic set of criteria, and hold them to account if they fall short, then the quality of teachers will improve.
But introducing teacher standards in South Africa also comes with a caveat. Research into the value of teacher standards for South Africa warns that this approach could serve to de-professionalise the country’s teaching force if not approached carefully.
This is because there are effectively two types of teacher standards, and it’s important not to conflate the two. There are standards that professionalise teaching and standards that simply manage teachers. While standards which professionalise create cultures of collegiality, expertise and pride among teachers, standards that manage can leave them feeling brow-beaten, untrusted, and demotivated.
Yet management standards are often mistaken for professional standards. When this happens, teacher morale drops. This is a common trend in countries like South Africa which have a “vicious” rather than “virtuous” schooling cycle.
How the schooling cycle works
The quality of a nation’s teachers cannot be divorced from the quality of its learners exiting schools. This is because successive cohorts of learners progress through school, enter university as student teachers, and graduate as teachers where they nurture the next cohort through the cycle. The end of school is therefore the beginning of higher education.
In a virtuous schooling cycle, such as Finland, education is a desirable career choice for top graduates. This allows for competitive entry requirements for teacher education programmes, which in turn allows for rigorous and challenging courses. This, in turn, produces high quality teachers who improve learner outcomes. The quality and professionalism of the teachers nurtures the next generation of high-quality teacher trainees.
In a virtuous cycle the system can afford to set standards that reflect the best professional knowledge internationally. Initial teacher education is intensive and teachers exit the programmes with high levels of subject and pedagogical knowledge. As a result, their learners perform well and the school system enjoys a high level of public esteem.
Consequently teaching is a prestigious and attractive profession which recruits the brightest and most motivated school graduates, who don’t require continual monitoring and oversight. Teachers instead enjoy professional autonomy; they are trusted in key decisions about their teaching and professional development.
Compare this to South Africa, which has a vicious schooling cycle. Initial teacher education is highly variable but generally insufficient. For example, a study found that three out of five of the Higher Education Institutions that were sampled provided no English language, literature, or linguistic education for teacher trainees not specialising in this subject, despite poor English language proficiency among teacher trainees being a ubiquitous concern.
Unsurprisingly then, research on newly qualified teachers indicates that students enter their studies with very poor skills, and leave with little more. Consequently, their learners do very poorly and teaching is perceived as a low status career. Teacher education programmes are therefore in general unable to reliably attract high quality graduates, and so tend to be less demanding. The vicious cycle repeats itself.
In vicious schooling cycles governments take it upon themselves to hold teachers accountable. Standards are used to manage teachers, and to protect students from the worst educators through supervisory surveillance and control. Invariably, the relationship between teacher unions and governments becomes antagonistic and generates feelings of fear and mistrust. This, in turn, alienates the best school graduates who frankly have better career options.
While in-service training programmes attempt to make up the backlog, and some are succeeding in achieving small learning gains, they cannot fully compensate for the lack of teacher skills resulting from poor initial teacher education and generally unskilled matriculants.
Not all standards professionalise teaching
Given its vicious cycle, management standards may be more likely than professional standards in South Africa. Does this mean that South African teachers are damned to the stick, rather than the carrot? Not necessarily. There are many excellent teachers who are hungry for opportunities to develop in ways that nurture autonomy and collegiality.
South Africa should not shy away from developing and promoting professional best practice, and providing the opportunities for teachers to reach them.
At the same time, management standards must be considered carefully. While they may prevent the worst teaching, they’re unlikely to create the professional culture that promotes the best teaching and attracts the best candidates.
Source of the notice: https://www.thesouthafrican.com/south-africa-school-teacher-crisis/
The Republic of Angola and UNESCO have discussed the implementation of a cooperation agreement concerning 140 scholarships for doctoral and postdoctoral courses.
The information was provided in Luanda by Unesco regional representative for Central Africa, the Egyptian Salah Khaled, who was in the country to discuss with the Angolan authorities, among other issues, the cooperation program between Angola and the United Nations’ organization, in the area of education.
According to Salah Khaled, during his visit to Angola, the first since he was appointed Unesco’s representative for Central Africa eight months ago, he met with the Minister of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Maria do Rosário Bragança Sambo.
He also met with the Minister of Culture, Carolina Cerqueira, as chairman of the Interministerial Commission created by the Angolan head of State, João Lourenço, to accompany the entire cooperation program between Angola and Unesco.
With the Minister of Culture, Salah Khaled said he analyzed aspects related to the beginning of the Luanda Biennale on Culture of Peace in Africa, a commitment made by the Angolan head of state during his visit to UNESCO headquarters last May.
During his stay in Angola, Salah Khaled, who has already left the country, also met withthe ministers of Youth and Sports, Transport, Environment and Telecommunications, with whom he discussed issues related to cooperation between Angola and Unesco.
Source of the notice: https://allafrica.com/stories/201811200086.html
Back in the days when higher education was mostly for the benefit of a select group of middle-class kids, I had a meeting with my school careers teacher, who asked me what I wanted to do in the future. When I told her I was thinking about furthering my studies and finding a job that involved writing, she declared that a suitable plan for me was to leave school at 16 and train to become a secretary. Apparently I didn’t look like the sort of person who should attend university.
Over time I’d come to believe these attitudes belonged to the past – a bygone age of middle-class privilege now thankfully over. Now, though, it seems that thinking has become core government policy.
It seems to be more difficult than ever for young people to enter higher education. Graduates in England have the highest student debts in the developed world. They will leave institutions with nearly double the debt of their US counterparts, and three times the debt of the next highest in Europe. A commons committee this week found a wide gap in access between the most and least advantaged students, despite institutions’ spending on access and widening participation schemes. It saw evidence that showed that poorer students were hit hardest by the system of student loans, and expressed concern at the drop in numbers of part-time and mature students. Thanks to the abolition of maintenance grants in 2015, the poorest students will pay on average £14,000 more in loans than better-off students. Once they emerge from their studies, on average they will have forked out a grand total of £57,000, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.
And universities themselves are facing unprecedented criticism. Since the summer, accusations have raged about a rise in the number of unconditional offers given out. The institutions have been blamed for a “bums on seats” mentality by the higher education minister Sam Gyimah, who appears to have forgotten that just four years ago the government lifted the cap on student numbers in an effort to marketise higher education. Then there have been exaggerated and often false claims about no-platforming and safe spaces.
And alongside this, the government has a plan to create three million apprenticeships by 2020. So, it seems poorer students worried about the cost of universities can opt for one of these. Perhaps the new schemes will prove viable options for many young people. But who will decide which 18-year-olds are best suited to vocational study? And on what grounds will these decisions be based? We could end up going back to the days when university was only for the well-off, with the disadvantaged predominantly taking apprenticeships.
It’s incredible that the politicians and policymakers who try to undermine universities have themselves benefited from all the opportunities offered by these places of learning – asking questions about themselves and the world around them and preparing for higher-status careers. A university education is apparently good enough for them, but not good enough for ordinary people.
Nine out of 10 MPs studied at university – and around half of the cabinet – and a quarter of all MPs – studied at Oxford or Cambridge, according to the Sutton Trust. Do these people really believe they’d have been better off leaving at school at 16 and taking a vocational course in political life?
How did society arrive at the idea that so many people having a degree is cause for worry? Britain is home to the world’s leading universities – primarily in the arts and humanities, the subjects most commonly derided. That half of young adults benefit from a university experience, and that society benefits in turn, should be applauded.
The well-worn cliches about so called “mickey-mouse” subjects and limited job prospects should be put to rest too. Evidence shows that employers are crying out for the “soft” skills that graduates possess as a result of their university experience. It doesn’t matter whether these degrees are in computer science or in leisure management; the skills that students acquire are valuable and transferable. And graduates earn on average £10,000 morethan their non-university educated counterparts.
Of course, debt causes huge stress among students. As a university lecturer, I have had many students share their worries with me about how they will afford books or balance their studies with part-time work. But it’s plain wrong that young people should be warned off education because it’s too expensive. What will be next? Should less well-off young people be discouraged from buying their own home too?
It’s the crippling student loan system that should be challenged, not the desire of young people to attend higher education institutions. We should be proud that half of all young adults benefit from our university system. RA Butler, the Conservative education minister who conceived the 1944 Education Act, should be turning in his grave.
Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/09/poorer-pupils-higher-education-university-benefits-privilege
Chinese students offer a substantial financial reward for Irish universities. But some academics are concerned about what a greater dependence on revenue from China could mean for freedom of speech on campus, writesYvonne Murray
«I really miss the autumn in Beijing,» said Junhan Zhang, who is studying Irish at University College Dublin, «with the smell of roasted sweet potatoes and chestnuts.»
«But Autumn in Dublin is wonderful too».
Junhan is one of the rising number of Chinese students in higher education in Ireland today.
Second only to the US in terms of students sent, China represents an important market for Ireland’s cash-strapped colleges.
It is one that a delegation of 11 universities and technical institutions, headed by the Minister of State for Training and Skills John Halligan is in Beijing to get a bigger slice of.
«The purpose of the visit is to further collaboration and cooperation with the Chinese education system» he said.
«We have 62 collaborative projects at present and we have signed four memorandums of understanding.
«We now have over 3,500 Chinese students coming to Ireland. The Chinese market is now worth €35.7 million annually.
«Our story resonates around the world – we are a small country, with a small population but a really big hitter in education,» he adds.
There were just over 1,300 study visas granted to Chinese students in 2013, rising to 2,216 last year.
Applications so far this year suggest a further 20% rise.
Many of the applicants enter via joint programmes with Chinese higher-level institutions.
John Halligan (C) with Mary Simpson Director of International Office AIT, Jack Meng, Director of Asia, Irish Ambassador Eoin O’Leary and Niall O’Donnellan Enterprise Ireland
UCD’s partnership with the Beijing University of Technology, established in 2012, sees about 40-50 Chinese students joining the science, technology and commerce departments annually, each paying fees and administration costs of between €14,000 – €16,000.
This week, Maynooth University will sign a memorandum of understanding with Fuzhou University, in the southern province of Fujian, bringing Ireland’s total number of joint partnerships with Chinese higher education institutions to five.
The Maynooth-Fuzhou joint college of engineering is expected to see 1,200 Chinese science and technology students graduate over the next four years.
Maynooth University is hoping it will lead to future research and innovation partnerships, particularly in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics.
The bite of funding cuts
Irish universities have been feeling the pinch of austerity for the past decade. Falling budgets and staff numbers have been blamed for a drop in the world rankings tables this year.
But Ireland could stand to gain from China’s current trade and political tensions with traditional study destinations such as the US and Australia.
«There are signs that Chinese students are becoming increasingly nervous about studying in the US, largely as a result of tightened immigration restrictions,» said Ellie Bothwell, the global rankings editor at Times Higher Education.
«Recent data also show that the number of Chinese people applying for Australian higher education visas has stalled.
«It has been suggested that visa problems and geopolitical tensions have played a factor in dampening interest.
«All this means that countries such as the UK and Ireland could see more university applications and enrolments from Chinese students in the near future,» she said.
The delegation this week is also keen to convey the message to China’s students that Ireland remains firmly within the EU, while its closest neighbour prepares to leave.
Academic freedom
But while an uptick in numbers could mean a substantial increase in fees – non-EU students pay three to four times as much in tuition as their European counterparts – some professors sound a note of caution.
«One concern about greater reliance on the Chinese market for fees is that it could prompt universities and their governing structures to be more accommodating should the Chinese authorities interfere in some way to curtail academic freedom,» said Alexander Dukalskis, assistant professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at UCD.
«We see some academic publishers that make money in the Chinese market, for example, adhere to the government’s censorship demands,» he said.
«It would be a problem if Irish universities perceived that they had to curtail academic freedom or engage in self-censorship to protect access to the Chinese student market.
«We ought to be very careful to never demonise Chinese students,» he added, «because we may not like some policies of the Chinese Communist Party.»
Restrictions on campus activities have tightened significantly in China in recent years, in line with a wider crackdown on civil society. In 2013, a document, reportedly aimed at «dangerous Western values» – which became known as the «Seven Speak Nots» – was posted online by a professor of law at a Shanghai university.
It revealed a government ban on teaching topics such as freedom of the press, human rights, judicial independence and past mistakes of the communist party. The professor, Zhang Xuezhong, was promptly dismissed from his teaching post.
Critics have accused China of attempting to also stifle debate abroad, via their Confucius Institutes – government-funded and controlled language and culture centres based on university campuses. As a result, several universities in Europe and North America have severed ties with the centres.
«The Chinese Communist Party views Confucius Institutes as a means to improve China’s image abroad,» said Prof Dukalskis.
«They are a very intentional and integral part of Beijing’s effort to cultivate a more amenable international environment for the CCP’s policies.
«Given that the Party, which ultimately controls Confucius Institutes, does not respect free academic inquiry domestically there ought to be major concerns about protecting academic freedom on campuses that host the institutes.
«For example, issues like repression in Xinjiang or Tibet, the policies and personal wealth of Xi Jinping, or the jailing of government critics are basically off-limits for academic inquiry in China and so universities abroad should be alert to the possibility that the Chinese Communist Party would seek to externalise censorship on these and similar issues,» he said.
«I am not aware of any such efforts in Ireland yet,» he added, «but there are troubling examples elsewhere that should stimulate awareness here»‘
The building of UCD’s Confucius Institute’s new premises has been stalled over a construction funding dispute.
On Friday in Beijing, Minister Halligan met with representatives of Hanban, the Confucius Institute’s governing body.
«We discussed it. We didn’t go into it in great detail,» he said, «we are engaged in further cooperation and collaboration over the next couple of weeks and months with them.»
When asked about what safeguards Irish universities have in place to protect academic freedom, he said: «We trust our universities and institutes of technology.
«I have ultimate faith, they do the right thing for their universities and for their country on that issue.»
Student life a long way from home
Fang Zhang has a PhD from Beijing Foreign Studies University and is studying Irish at UCD, on a Chinese government-sponsored scholarship.
«I understand it’s easy to have collisions in mutual understanding when it relates to politics,» he wrote in an email exchange, «but I feel myself as a patriot and I do not believe it is fair to criticise everything we are doing in China.»
«It is more complicated than Westerners believe,» he added. «It is easy to criticise the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government, but without it, China would never grow as a strong country.»
A long way from China, Fang sometimes gets homesick, «mostly because of the food,» he said.
It is a sentiment echoed by Junhan.
«I have problems adjusting to the cuisine,» she said, «it is too oily and sweet.»
Despite the culinary challenges, both students feel welcome in Ireland. «You scarcely see cold faces like in some other countries,» explains Fang.
They will spend two years at UCD before returning home to teach Irish in Beijing.
«For the second year here, I would love to live with an Irish family, » said Junhan. «It is better if they have pets, have interests towards China and Chinese culture.»
«And accept Chinese cooking,» she adds.
Source of the notice: https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2018/1021/1005637-china-students-ireland/
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