Erasmus+ Programme

(asked on 6th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the UK no longer participating in Erasmus+ on the number of international students studying at UK universities.


Answered by
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
This question was answered on 21st January 2021

Throughout our negotiations with the EU, the government carefully considered the potential impacts of launching a new scheme compared to continuing to participate in the Erasmus+ scheme under the terms on offer. The design of the Turing scheme has been driven by our ambition for a truly global, UK-wide scheme, and we are confident that international students will continue to want to study in the UK’s world-leading educational institutions.

The UK is a world-leading destination for study and research, with 4 universities in the world’s top 10 and 18 in the top 100 – more than the whole of the EU in total. The UK is currently second only to the USA as a destination for international students in higher education, with approximately 486,000 overseas students.

It is clear that we have considerable appeal as a destination and partner in international mobilities and exchange schemes. We will harness this advantage to deliver an international education exchange programme which has a genuinely global reach, establishing new relationships with academic institutions not just across Europe but also the rest of the world.

More broadly, our updated International Education Strategy will respond to the challenges of COVID-19. It will set out how the government will support the whole of the UK’s education sector in the recovery of its international activity, pursuing our ambition to increase the value of our education exports to £35 billion per annum and to increase the number of international higher education students hosted in the UK to 600,000 per annum, both by 2030.

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