OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard)
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Committee for Employment and Learning OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard) Student Plus 14 March 2012 NORTHERN IRELAND ASSEMBLY Committee for Employment and Learning Student Plus 14 March 2012 Members present for all or part of the proceedings: Mr Thomas Buchanan (Deputy Chairperson) Mr Sammy Douglas Mr Chris Lyttle Mr Fra McCann Mr Barry McElduff Mr David McIlveen Mr Pat Ramsey Mr Alastair Ross Witnesses: Professor Tony Gallagher Queen's University Belfast Ms Isabel Jennings Queen's University Belfast Ms Una Reid Queen's University Belfast The Deputy Chairperson: I welcome Isabel Jennings, Professor Tony Gallagher and Una Reid from Queen's University Belfast (QUB) and ask them to give us a presentation. Professor Tony Gallagher (Queen's University Belfast): Thanks very much for inviting us to come along to talk about Student Plus. I will immediately hand over to my colleagues, who will talk you through the detail of the presentation. Ms Isabel Jennings (Queen's University Belfast): As Professor Gallagher said, we are delighted to be here this morning. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to learn a little bit about the Student Plus team. I have given you a lot of detail in the pack that you received in advance. I plan to highlight a few areas, after which I will happy to take questions on anything you would like to discuss. As the names suggests, Student Plus is all about the student. We have quite a broad portfolio of areas, as you can see from the slides. We want to tangibly impact on the student experience of everyone who walks through the door of the university. Our connection, through marketing, recruitment and admissions, starts in primary schools, where we engage and try to raise young people's aspirations so that they can realise their potential. We try to do that in a fun way, through science workshops like 'Magical Christmas' and ‘Exploding Vegetables and Fuels of the Future’, using a very pictorial approach that engages young people from a young age. As we move into post-primary schools, we are, in many regards, trying to make young people think about why they should go to university and how to make an informed choice about what to do. We are particularly interested in the I students who are the most able but the least likely to progress. In essence, we are trying to identify talent and nurture it the whole way through the system. Clearly, given the world that we are in, we want to provide a global experience for our students. We have 1,400 international students on campus, and they genuinely enrich the student experience for our domestic students. If students are talking about leadership in a tutorial and someone from China or India is there, that helps them to understand some of the challenges that you will find in the workplace today. Engagement with employers is fundamental. In fact, next Saturday, we are having quite a large conference, to which all the careers teachers from across Northern Ireland are invited. Invest Northern Ireland will present an employment landscape that looks at what the future will look like and at driving the vision for the economy. A number of key employers will be there to talk to careers teachers and to help to inform parents about making the right choices for young people. Even the students' union takes centre stage in this area. We are fortunate to have the students' union within the directorate. It is almost the heartbeat of everything that we do. A student sits at every table and influences all the decisions that we make on everything from the mix of sporting facilities through to the catering. It is a bit like a campus living room. All decisions are informed by student opinion, and we are constantly changing our mix to respond to the needs of our students. Within the students' union, we have The Hatch, which is an incubator. So not only can you think of your business but you can bring it to life within the union. A lot of role models across Northern Ireland come in to support young people in unlocking their entrepreneurial perspective, and we have won quite a lot of awards in that area. We recently had our own "QUB Apprentice". Barry McElduff was good enough to attend, and Jedi Jim was the Lord Sugar on that occasion. We have a vibrant connection with our students in that regard. Every young person is unique. We provide childcare facilities for those who need it, and we have a 40- year history of doing so. At the moment, a third of childcare places are taken up by children of international students and staff. That enriches the experience for the young person receiving childcare and supports students with children in their studies. We are trying to bring the campus community alive. We want people to live in accommodation that is conducive to learning well, so we have invested significantly in custom-built accommodation that meets students' needs. You will see more of our sports facilities shortly. What we are really trying to do is enrich students' CVs and make them stand out from an employment point of view by getting them involved in the 130 clubs and societies that are available across the campus. We also have a strong and unique cultural and arts heritage. We have our own film theatre, gallery and festival, which will be 50 years old this year. We have quite a number of students who may be very strong in science but are also very good at music. We are trying to enrich the breadth of talent that each young person has. In essence, Student Plus is all about ensuring that every young person who comes through the door of Queen's has a life-changing experience. It is very much anchored in creating an exceptional student experience that leads to career opportunities for our graduates and, in particular, develops global citizens who will address international challenges. We have a long heritage of Queen's graduates going across the world and making a difference, and we want to continue in that tradition. The Deputy Chairperson: Thank you for your presentation. One thing that I noted was the connection with careers teachers and students. It is important to ensure that students are guided in the direction that they should be going in. Again, that would involve working with employers and businesses and so forth to ensure that we are tapping into the right issues for students and that they are being guided in the right direction. Could you elaborate on the work between the careers teachers and the students? Ms Jennings: Our engagement with careers teachers probably starts when young people are choosing their GCSEs. We are trying to open the minds of young people, particularly if they choose the university route, around what enabler subjects they have to choose to give them access to a university choice that will lead to the career that they want. In the main, careers teachers and parents understand what 2 the traditional careers like medicine, law, teaching and pharmacy look like. We have been proactively working with companies like Citigroup, CyberSource and areas with software engineering career prospects, and one of the challenges is that careers teachers and parents do not know anything about those careers, so it is very hard for them to guide a young person in that context. We have tried to allow careers teachers and principals to go into the workplace and learn about the very good careers in those areas. For example, students who are very good at science and maths may automatically think of medicine as a career route, but that may not be the best career choice for them. Many of those students have fabulous software engineering careers available to them in Northern Ireland. Indeed, much of the inward investment that has occurred has experienced a deficit in the numbers of qualified graduates available to work in the areas that are required to drive the vision for inward investment. With Invest Northern Ireland, we have been bringing together a lot of very active employers across the various sectors that represent Northern Ireland's economy. In fact, we have just created an employers' forum to influence our curriculum development as well as how we ensure that young people make choices about careers that will actually be available when they leave university. There is a lot of engagement. We reach out at a school level. We speak with students in year 10 and year 12, so we help students all the way along the journey, but, more and more, we are doing that in an enriched way, with content from employers. People want to see outcomes, and it is about the culmination of what we do, from primary school right through to post-primary school, university and the very many career opportunities, to unlock the unique talent that each young person has. Mr Douglas: Thank you for your presentation and your hospitality. It is very much appreciated. You mentioned that there are 1,400 international students on campus. Where are they from? Ms Jennings: The highest proportion comes from China. Our key markets include China, Malaysia, the USA and India, but we have students from Taiwan, too. Of those 1,400 students, 1,027 are full-time students who come directly to the university. We have 200 who are on progression or foundation degrees and who will then transfer to Queen's. We have about another 200 ERASMUS students, who are exchange students from Europe.