Author: Admin

‘Honesty’ the key component for successful boarding school placements

“Trying to shoehorn a child into an unsuitable environment can be disastrous for both the child, family and the school itself”

When considering an overseas boarding school education, there are so many factors for parents to consider, writes Pat Moores of UK Education Guide. Meanwhile, schools and agents bombard families with information that may or may not be relevant to them.

We asked guardians and schools if they were only allowed to provide just one piece of advice to parents to help them make the best decision for their children, what would it be?

Interestingly, the answers received almost all followed a similar theme and we highlight three responses below:

Julia Evans, Director at Cambridge Guardian Angels, argues that the most important thing is to ask parents and agents to be honest about the information they provide schools & guardians.

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The magnitude of the crisis among international students

“Not many international students are equipped to advocate for themselves when a crisis arises”

This week’s guest blog is by Ruby Cheng, director of the International Enrollment Program (Asian Pacific Region) at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.

I’m writing this article as an international educator, a guardian of a college international student, and an advocate who wants to voice up the concerns for the vulnerable and underrepresented group, international students, during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

When the COVID-19 became imminent in China in early February, I saw a great effort exerted by U.S. institutions, trying to accommodate Chinese applicants. Many international admissions offices offered opportunities for applicants to delay the transcript submission due to the closure of schools and universities in China.

In response to the closure of the testing centres for TOFEL, IELTS and GRE/GMAT, many admissions offices provided flexible policies including online interviews and Duolingo test, which allows students to take the English proficiency test at their homes. Those strategies made Chinese applicants and their families feel welcomed, despite the virus chaos they are experiencing in China.

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The role of think tanks in education

“Education is an important and lasting way in which university-affiliated think tanks can impact the world”

By connecting the worlds of the practitioner and the scholar, says Aaron McKeil of  LSE IDEAS, think tanks – university-affiliated think tanks especially – act as conduits between the two.

They strive to convey concepts and ideas from academia to practice and to bring experience and insider knowledge from practice to academia. Research and working groups are some of the most common mediums for this activity, but education has an important function and role too.

Think tanks, especially university-affiliated think tanks, can provide education by conveying academic knowledge to practitioners, at various levels. They can also provide education by connecting students to the distinct type of expertise that professional practitioners can provide.
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The role of language instruction in learning performance

“Schools that fail to emphasise teaching foreign languages do their students a grave disservice”

Around the world, various countries espouse different attitudes toward language and learning, notes Alyssa Abel of education blog, Syllabusy. She points out that European nations, for example, begin teaching foreign languages in primary school or before while conversely, many American schools do not offer these classes as electives until high school, and several have even eliminated foreign languages as a graduation requirement.

Schools that fail to emphasise teaching foreign languages do their students a grave disservice. Researchers have found a strong relationship between language and learning and its positive impact on academic performance. How can educators motivate their students to expand their linguistic ability beyond their native tongue?

How Does Language Affect Learning?

Research indicates that foreign language instruction bolsters academic performance in many ways — including an upward trajectory in test scores.

In one study, researchers selected random third-grade students to receive Spanish lessons three times per week for one semester. The teacher instructed class entirely in the foreign tongue. The students who received this instruction scored significantly higher in math and language on the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) than those who did not. Given the emphasis on these measures when it comes to funding, the practice offers a valuable means to improve overall scholarship.

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Rethink 2020: Five trends to watch

“In these trying times, rather than fret about the future, it’s useful to take a step back and assess”

Recent head-spinning events – raging fires causing university closures in Australia; the UK exiting Europe; and most recently, a coronavirus outbreak bringing global mobility to a standstill – has the international education sector battered as if by a hurricane of headlines, writes Anna Esaki-Smith, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Education Rethink.

While none of these occurrences relates directly to education, they pose fundamental risks to an industry whose very core is rooted in the free movement of people. However, in these trying times, rather than fret about the future, it’s useful to take a step back and assess.

In Education Rethink’s latest report, Rethink 2020: Five Trends to Watch, we go back to basics by examining the foundational undercurrents driving student mobility towards the English-speaking world.

Consider that, in 2019, the total population of international students across the US, UK, Australia and Canada – grew by more than 115,000, according to the latest student visa issuance data.

But focusing on increasing numbers alone is not enough. Where are students coming from? And what are the factors driving those flows?

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Coronavirus: separated families need greater focus

“Families are bearing the brunt of this disruption on both a psychological and practical level, and more must be done to meet their needs”

As the Coronavirus crisis widens geographically, the immediate focus for the boarding school sector is to provide up to date health advice to help keep schools virus-free. However, as Pat Moores of UK Education Guide writes, alongside this issue there is a massive human story. 

As a result of the Coronavirus outbreak, young people are being separated from their families unexpectedly, uncertain when the situation will improve and concerned about their own welfare and the welfare of their families.

We have heard of one Chinese pupil who has donated £750 of her own money to help Wuhan residents, as many of her friends live in the Hubei region and she is very worried about them.

So what about enhanced pastoral care provision during this crisis?

As Caroline Nixon, General Secretary of the British Association of Independent Schools with International Students (BAISIS) says, “anything a school can do to reassure the child and to put into place arrangements that support them emotionally as well as physically is welcome; the most obvious being keeping the school open so that children without good guardians have somewhere familiar to stay.”

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AI use cases that are shifting the higher ed landscape

“Imagine if universities could determine a student’s success or failure outcome before granting them admissions. Well, it’s not as far-fetched as one might think”

As the world of EdTech buzzes with new AI-powered developments, Ashish Fernando, the Founder and CEO of iSchoolConnect, talks about the effect of AI in student engagement, classroom education, student retention, and more.

AI in the higher education sector has been steadily increasing and spanning a broad swath of uses ranging from chatbots to augmented reality and more. Here are six groundbreaking technologies that I think, will change the face of education technology.

  1. Conversational AI for student engagement

Conversational AI isn’t simply limited to Alexa, Siri, Facebook, Google, and similar industries anymore. Universities worldwide are turning to chatbots as a means of student engagement and application management.

The conversational assistants use advanced natural language processing to function seamlessly and help students with information about the university campus, academics, student life, and more. From Georgia Tech’s ‘Jill Watson’ to New York University’s ‘BobCat’, the presence of AI in education technology is evident and the universities are certainly keeping up.

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Work, rest and learn – delivering flexible higher education in Estonia

“Universities across the world have an opportunity to look at how they can use technology to help students balance work and study commitments”

More and more students today are juggling work and family responsibilities alongside their university studies, writes learning development specialist at the Estonian Business School, Marko Puusaar.

Add to this the growing number of students who are looking globally to find the right course or university and you can quickly see why the traits of a typical higher education student are becoming increasingly difficult to define. Expectations are changing too, with demand growing for institutions to provide greater flexibility so that students can study how, when and where they want to.

Higher education is evolving. Universities that make good use of technology can adapt teaching methods much more effectively to attract students from across the world, support them through their studies and respond quickly in the event that their circumstances change.

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Is COVID-19 a moment for online education to take the lead?

“Beyond helping the students and the industry, edtech can also help with the impact of the coronavirus more generally”

As the international education sector grapples with the impact COVID-19 is having on student mobility, Chief Content & Partnership Officer at FutureLearn, Justin Cooke, argues that the technology is available for the education sector to lead the way in combating the coronavirus, both the spread of the virus itself and its impact on learning and economies.

In the US, Chinese students make up over one third of all international students. In the UK, one-third of all non-EU students at British campuses are now from China. And in Australia, Chinese students make up 10 per cent of all students. It is clear that Chinese students represent a significant percentage of international cohorts so it’s no surprise that the education sector, as well as those students, are being impacted by the coronavirus. But the question is what are we going to do about it?

With the coronavirus and the related travel bans, many Chinese students can’t enter the countries they are supposed to be studying in. This impacts their studies, of course, but also the economies of those countries.

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TNE must deliver portable qualifications that will be recognised internationally

“At times, regulations developed to safeguard students and societies… can hinder the achievement of the very benefits associated with TNE”

Cross-border cooperation and coordination are needed to reap the full benefits of transnational education, writes Fabrizio Trifiro. Fabrizio is the recently-appointed Head of Quality Benchmark Services at UK NARIC and was formerly at the UK QAA where he led on the quality assurance of TNE.

From my experience in the external quality assurance of UK TNE over a number of years, I appreciate the key challenges and opportunities facing TNE providers, students, and sending and receiving countries’ authorities; and also some of the priorities to focus on, to fully achieve the benefits that can come from TNE.

The challenges of TNE are several, but it is with a firm sight to its potential benefits that they need to be looked at. TNE is a way to make available education programmes to people who would not otherwise be able to access them because they are unwilling or unable to move internationally, be it for financial, family, work, or visa-related reasons.

TNE has, therefore, the inherently progressive potential to widen international access to quality and relevant education, in particular in locations where there is unmet demand, contributing to the development of skills needed to support social and economic development.

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