Government immigration policy could harm city's English language industry

Eddie Byers, the chief executive of English UK, has blamed the Government’s hard-line stance on immigration for falling foreign student figures.

Sussex has bucked the trend of a 0.83% drop nationally last year, recording an increase in study data. Within this, Brighton and Hove saw a near-levelling out after a dramatic increase in 2013.

Mr Byers warned the national trend could continue if students are counted as migrants, adding that it puts off people thinking of studying here.

The news comes after one language school in Brighton announced it was closing last month in the face of mounting costs.

Ovingdean Hall College, which redeveloped its site in the hope of cashing in on a student boom, is expected to close after its current crop of students finish.

Figures released by English UK, which looks after both private and state-funded member schools, showed a 0.83% decline in the number of students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) last year, down to 580,618.

Private English language teaching (ELT) providers, such as Ovingdean, fell by 3.3%.

Mr Byers told The Argus: “Students are not migrants – they bring money, jobs and new connections for the UK as demonstrated in many studies.

“Other countries are seizing the chance to grow and compete, and their governments are supporting them. We need this to happen here.”

In its last official figures on value, English UK estimated that ELT was worth about £206 million to Brighton and Hove in 2013, placing the city third nationally behind London and Bournemouth.

The key unit of measurement used by ELT providers is “student weeks”.

A “student week” is a measure submitted by privately-funded member centres. One unit is one student studying for at least ten hours a week. Students studying fewer than ten hours are not counted.

In Sussex, student weeks rose from 218,610 in 2012 to 251,665 in 2013, with Brighton and Hove’s figure as part of this jumping from 140,613 to 197,320 over the same period.

By contrast, locally, last year saw a cool-off, with the Sussex figure rising by 11,929 to 263,594 while Brighton and Hove increased by just 382 hours.

Mr Byers said: “It’s a great industry going through a tough period. The difficulty is specific to the UK, and it’s because students are counted as migrants by the UK government.

“This is driving a broad range of negative policies which is harming this vital export industry.”

One Sussex-based EFL teacher, who did not want to be named, said: “We’ve had moans from host families not getting enough students.

“They rely on the income. It’s some people’s only income – they do it as a business.

“I think it’s easy to be taught online nowadays – you don’t need to go to England. And there are many EFL teachers going abroad.”

English UK is now campaigning for students to be removed from migrant figures.

The organisation argues these students are not migrants because they arrive, study and leave again.

Mr Byers, who joined English UK at the beginning of last year, told its annual conference and AGM in Manchester last month that the sector “faced on onslaught in 2014”, with visa policy and students counted in net migration figures making for a “difficult operating environment”.

He also said: “There are fewer students in total staying for a shorter time,” adding that the market was “eroding”.

With the reality of a Conservative majority ruling Westminster for the next five years, following the tightening of visa issuing, Mr Byers said there was a “question mark” over how people were feeling about this year.

Set in the rolling hills of Brighton’s green and pleasant surrounds, Ovingdean Hall College must look like a tempting proposition for a language student wanting a taste of Sussex by the sea.
It promised top-of-the-range en-suite rooms in a 78-bed block, a heated swimming pool, tennis courts and revamped learning facilities.

But now the future of the language school lies in tatters with its closure is expected to cost up to 60 jobs.
Is this the beginning of a wider decline in the industry, as warned of by Eddie Byers of English UK, or simply a case of a private school that grew too big too soon?
Ovingdean Hall College invested heavily in its facilities after opening in early 2011 yet now its directors have confirmed its “likely closure”.

A press statement read: “The school has been suffering from financial difficulties for some time and a decision has been made to cancel bookings after the end of May 2015.
“Students have been notified and every effort is being made to relocate places booked during the summer to other language schools in the area.

“Ovingdean Hall College Limited is consulting with staff and is working with other educational bodies to try to find employment elsewhere.”

The Argus understands staff were called into a meeting on Wednesday, May 13, and told the school had run out of money with no bookings due.
Its purpose-built study block and accommodation is set to close in the second week of June.

A look at its accounts filed to Companies House show that the company has made six-figure losses every year since 2011.

Its last public accounts filed in March 2014 show that it made total losses of £882,584.
This was a slight improvement on its 2013 loss figure, which, after a restatement, stood at 1,068,702.
Such loss figures are not necessarily the be-all and end-all, if the company’s owners have the money to absorb it.

In September 2010 the eight-hectare Ovingdean site, including its Grade II-listed former mansion and a number of modern buildings, was bought by a group of wealthy individuals from London who invest in the property market at a cost of £4.5 million.
At the time, it was Ovingdean School for the Deaf with only 16 deaf children still attending, with the rest going into mainstream schools.

Trevor Racke, a director of Ovingdean Hall College, summed it up when he spoke to The Argus: “We were a baby amongst some pretty large language schools.”
With Brighton and Hove accounting for about half of Sussex’s student figures, it is clear there are a raft of learning options (language schools employ about 1,000 people and the city attracts 35,000 students annually of 66,000 across Sussex).

Add to this the near-20 planning applications filed by the college since 2011, one of which paved the way for its 78-bed student accommodation block in 2012, and it is conceivable the business grew too big too quickly at the wrong time.

Current students of Ovingdean will not be affected, and will be allowed to finish their courses at the school – something a spokeswoman for English UK said was “absolutely the right thing” to do.
But it is not all doom and gloom.
Brighton and Hove City Council’s 2014 visitor survey indicated 3% of all visitors to the city are language students – a percentage which has remained the same since its 2009 survey.

And elsewhere the concerns of English UK do not seem to be reflected in the appetite of wealthy families from overseas searching for a rounded British education for their offspring.
Britain’s most prestigious boarding schools are enrolling one foreign student for every five new pupils amid school fee rises that are “squeezing the middle class”, according to a national newspaper survey.

At Brighton College, 9.7% of students are from overseas – 5.5% from Hong Kong and other from countries including Russia, Bulgaria and China.
Gavin Stewart, executive director of the Brighton and Hove Economic Partnership, picture below, said the local economy as a whole was worth something in the region of £5.2 billion, with tourism bringing in between £850 million and £1 billion.

He told The Argus: “The significance of the sector can’t be underestimated, not just in terms of students coming here to study but also repeat visits or even visits from family and friends.
“Brighton’s economy managed to navigate the financial crisis relatively well and, given that the numbers of foreign students coming to the city is also slightly up on national figures, that’s clearly a continuation of that good news in terms of our output. However, we will need to keep a close eye on how the industry is developing so that it can continue to be the big hitter that it has become for employments opportunities for local people.”