The Prime Minister's Initiative is now in its second year, with many new activities underway. This one day event took place on Thursday 6 December 2007 at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) in Scotland, to update stakeholders on new developments and opportunities.

The presentations given at this event are available below. Transcripts of the plenary sessions will be available soon.

The day covered each of the key strands of PMI2. Workshop sessions included:

			Further education partnerships: information on funding available to colleges in the FE sector and advice on how to compose a successful bid.
			Strategic alliances and partnerships (higher education): developing institution partnerships in Russia, India and China.
			Student experience and employability: how institution-led initiatives are making a difference to the international student experience.
			Marketing: find out about the marketing and campaigns being delivered through PMI2 and how your institution can be involved.

The full programme is available below.

If you have any queries about the PMI2 Development Day, please contact Education UK Marketing.

Programme

Development workshops
Further education partnerships

Presentation (586KB)

Funding is available via the PMI2 FE Partnerships Fund to support Further Education colleges in developing strategic alliances and partnerships with overseas organisations.

The overall aim is to support successful skills development and employability through sharing ideas and good practice, developing joint products, forging closer links between education and industry and strengthening national reforms in technical and vocational education and training (TVET).

In this workshop, the Association of Colleges and British Council will outline how the global FE partnerships element of PMI2 is being managed and how priorities are being set. In addition, we will provide an up-to-date briefing on China, following the Education Summit held in Beijing, present a case study of best practice in forging college partnerships, plus guidance on the submission of future applications.

There will then be an opportunity for an open discussion so that all participants can ask questions and seek clarification of the deadlines.

Strategic alliances and partnerships (higher education)

Presentation (1.69MB)

Dramatic changes in international education suggest a very different landscape for the future – one in which both the UK’s positioning and many of its markets will depend on strong strategic overseas partnerships.

In this workshop, we will look at how BRIDGE (British Degrees in Russia) and UKIERI (UK India Education & Research Initiative) are working towards developing sustainable partnerships, at governmental and institution level. We will also be taking a look at the importance of the partnership agenda to the longer term sustainability of the China-UK relationship, looking specifically at refocusing to multidimensional strategic alliances.

There will be an opportunity for smaller working group discussions to explore:

			how institutions establish effective partnerships;
			how institutions embed this activity into their strategy;
			what the culture of partnerships is and whether institutions need to take a different approach in order to take this agenda forward.

Student experience and employability

Presentation (1.68MB)

The student experience and employment strand of PMI2 is, arguably, both one of the most important and the most challenging. Many institutions are increasing their investment in this area - but so are the competitors, and expectations are rising.

What are students saying? How can institutions - with the relatively modest sums available from PMI2 - strengthen still further the advice and support they give? Are any changes needed to national regulations (covering standards, systems, entitlements or procedures)?

In this workshop, UKCISA will outline how this element of the initiative is being managed, how priorities are being set by the advisory group and showcase projects supported so far. Sector representatives from the group will then comment on those aspects which they see of most importance, issues and possible priorities for the future.

There will then be an opportunity for an open discussion so that all participants can ask questions and put forward proposals with a view to identifying major new project areas for the next two years.

Marketing

Presentation (1.55MB)

Global competition is growing dramatically, with many countries now seeking to position themselves as front-runners in the competitive international education market. This is leading to significant ‘market noise’, with many new brands in the market place.

Despite significantly more information, international students increasingly depend on word-of-mouth recommendations in response to the array of messages being presented to them, whilst policy makers and academics are increasingly basing formal partnership arrangements on the relationships that they have developed with other countries.

The need for a strong national brand, which is distinctive and differentiates the UK from other countries, is more important than ever. This workshop will explore how we best push the messages we want to get out about Education UK, how we generate content to provide evidence for those messages, how they’re packaged, and how we might make best use of the channels that we have available to us.

The workshop will provide an update on the marketing work that has been undertaken to date, discussion on future activity and how institutions might get involved.