介绍:
Hello and welcome to Education today I'm Wu You in Beijing. Joining me in the studio is Farrah.
Ni hao.
Hello. Today let's continue our trip around the world. Let's go to the UK.
Well here are some international students, they're talking about their experience and also how they feel about their time in the UK.
"Sir Mick Jagger"
"Plan B to Adele"
"When I was a kid I used to listen to nothing but British music"
"I remember the first time I came to the UK, like it was 1998. To me that was like tadah: you made it!"
"For me the greatest thing about Great Britain is the British ?? I just love how open minded the audience is here"
"It's just such a diverese place. It's just so easy to be creative"
"It's a place really connected to expressing yourself"
About the Chinese students in the UK. I've talked with May Huang, Assistant Director Education Marketing of Culture and Education section of the British Consulate General.
"So first of all are there any new beneficiery policies for the Chinese students to go to study in the UK?
Yeah actually regarding to the education, the UK -all education sectors from the UK will offer lots of scholarships for the Chinese students. For example today, we have lots of head teachers from UK boarding schools, even the UK boarding schools will provide lots of scholarships to the Chinese students as well. Another point I need to mention is about the visa. The UK visa now is very transparent and very simple and students no matter if it's just teenage students or students from the university they can apply for a visa very easily.
How easily? Could you further explain it?
OK maybe i can share with you some data. Last year more than ninety six percent of students received the UK visa successfuly. So you can know almost all the students can get the visa to study in the UK.
But that is a student right? So after their graduation is it easy for them to find a job? Or is there a period of time they can stay in the country until they find a job?
I need to say it depends. It depends on the opportunities and even the students capacities. So I would like to share that we are hosting a UK alumni campaign this year. We can show that lots of students can get internship opportunities in the UK or even work in the UK as well. But to be honest, China is still a great stage in the world so we would like also to encourage students to study in the UK and to contribute to China as well"
Well nowadays, more and more Chinese parents send their kids to study in the UK at a very early age. Some of them thought that it would be easier for the kids to adopt the language. About that, I've also talked with M.J. McLaughlin Headmaster of Durham School, a senior highschool in the UK.
"Currently how many Chinese students are there in the UK studying in your high school?
At the moment we have about twenty Chinese and Hong Kong students, we have around forty five boarders from overseas so the Chinese community makes up almost half of those.
Since you work in the high school in the UK, more and more Chinese parents are sending their kids at a very early age to go to study in the UK or in another country. Do you think it is really wise for the parents to send their kids to study in another country, at a very early age?
I think it depends on how early you're talking and I think it also depends on the people in the family.
Like in high school.
Right, well we have people as young as eleven who board with us most of whom aren't from overseas but we do have some thirteen year olds who board from China. One of the things which we noticed is that their language skills improve very, very quickly and to even though they may join us not speaking very much English, we put all the provision that's neccessary in place for them to learn English very quickly. Also every pupil has a guardian so there's somebody local to the school who looks after them, who's often known to the Chinese family. So for example in my school there's a big Chinese community nearby so some of those may act as guardians. So I understand why parents might be nervous at the thought of sending their sons or daughters a long way away but we do our very best to settle them into the school and make sure they're as comfortable as they possibly can be with all the local support that we can give"
That is Mr. M.J. McLaughlin Headmaster of Durham school in the UK. Just now May has talked about the UK visa so Britain's visa rules have been relaxed as a coalition ministers step up efforts to build lucrative trade links with China during a three day visit to London by premier Li Keqiang.
That's right and when he visited London it was during the summer so this's when that started taking place and the home Secretary Theresa May will unviel reforms designed to help the UK compete better with France and Germany for deals with firms from what has now become the world's second largest economy. So what they're doing is that they're trying to make it easier to give Chinese students student visas because they want more of these Chinese students to come in and study in the UK. Like your interview, she was saying about 90% get..that's actually really high. So that's a good amount of Chinese students getting visas.
So why target Chinese students?
Well, first of all the difficulties and the challenges of immigration rules placed by the Home Office in the UK have caused a lot of perspective students to look at other European countries such as Germany for their studies, and these are rival economies to the United Kingdom, so that's one reason. Another reason is the UK is turning to China for mutual interests and realises that Chinese students have the potential to be the business of the future and a part of a fast growing market such as China so they're trying to keep that relationship going by inviting students to come in and then hopefully in
