One of our main areas of focus in 2009 has been to develop our services to better meet the needs of the UK’s further education sector. You can find out more below about how we are working to achieve this. You can also find out about other support from the British Council to help you with international recruitment, partnership building and skills development, plus we've provided links to external organisations providing support and some useful documents.

We hope you find this useful. If you have any questions, comments or ideas, please contact the Education UK Partnership team. The FE champions within the Partnership team are Pete Shelley and Chris Brooks.

The Education UK Partnership’s further education strategy
Our purpose is to help UK schools, colleges and universities to recruit international students, build partnerships with international institutions, and meet their international education goals.

In 2008, we recognised that our services were not sufficiently meeting the needs of our FE members. As such, we set about putting together a new strategy to help us offer a better service to the FE sector.

Developed in 2009, the strategy is now being put into action. It involves a number of new initiatives, including:

			Carrying out a detailed segmentation and positioning exercise looking at different qualifications offered and the approach taken to international work to inform where the college sector positions itself when marketing UK education.
			Developing the college sector knowledge of British Council staff overseas so they can offer advice and promote the benefits of UK FE to students.
			Assisting colleges with capacity building through TNE support.
			Working with stakeholders on supported networking frameworks (i.e. UKCISA and AoC).
			Working jointly with key national stakeholders in support of the sector.
			Piloting an ambassadors scheme whereby experts from the sector undertake awareness and knowledge building work with British Council in country teams.

To lead the development of the strategy, we welcomed on board two FE advisors, Marguerite Hogg and Ashley Rowlands, both of who come from an FE international education background. We also worked closely with our FE advisory panel to ensure the strategy reflected the needs of a wide range of colleges.

FE advisory panel
The advisory panel is made up of volunteers from 17 member colleges:

			Blackpool and The Fylde College
			Bradford College
			Castle College Nottingham
			City College Brighton & Hove
			City College Plymouth
			City of Sunderland College
			John Leggott College
			Leeds City College
			Loughborough College
			Llandrillo College
			Stevenson College Edinburgh
			Strode College
			Swansea College
			Thanet College
			Wakefield College
			Waltham Forest College
			Wigan & Leigh College

The panel’s role is to act as a sounding board for developments the Partnership is making on behalf of the sector and also to support the strategic plan for the College sector.

The panel meets on a termly basis. The minutes from the following meetings are available:
10 September 2009 (128KB)
10 March 2009 (149KB)

If you are interested in joining or contacting the panel, please contact Chris Brooks.

FE newsletter
Our quarterly FE newsletter is designed to keep you up-to-date with what progress we are making with the FE strategy. It also highlights other international marketing, funding and networking opportunities for colleges which may be of interest to you. Subscribe to the Partnership FE newsletter or view past editions of the newsletter.

British Council support for UK further education colleges
In addition to the Education UK Partnership, the British Council manages a range of other programmes which support UK colleges in international recruitment, skills development and partnership building. Here are some you may find of interest:

			Marketing to international students: promote your institution through the Education UK website, Education UK guides and publications take part in global marketing campaigns use the Education UK logo find agents in new markets and more.
			Building partnerships with international institutions: funding, networking, best-practice and more: PMI2 Connect UKIERI - UK-India Education and Research Initiative England-African Partnerships
			Skills and vocational partnerships: Vocational Partnerships Skills for Employability

See the support for UK education and training providers section of the British Council website for details of other programmes available.

Other useful information
External organisations providing support
Other organisations supporting colleges’ internationalisation activities include:

			UK Borders Agency (UKBA)
			Association of Colleges (AoC) - England, Wales, Northern Ireland
			Scotland’s Colleges International (SCI)
			UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA)
			Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO)
			English UK
			Lifelong Learning Programme UK - funding for EU based curriculum projects for staff and students and vocational work placements abroad

If you are aware of any other stakeholder organisations that you have found particularly useful in your work and we could share with other member colleges please contact Chris Brooks.

Useful documents
You may find the following documents useful:

			A Review and Taxonomy: International College Partnership Models (1.79MB) and the accompanying tool kit for international partnerships (310KB), produced by OtraVista for the British Council Vocational Partnerships team
			AoC: Overseas Recruitment Survey results
			UKCISA: Benchmarking the provision of services for international students in further education institutions and FE self-assessment tool
			UKCISA: Transnational Education and the Student Experience: a PMI Student Experience project report
			Globalisation – Meeting the Challenge: an International Strategy for Further Education in England