Number of overseas students learning English here falls by 30% Sunday, June 07, 2009 By Susan Mitchell There has been a 30 per cent fall in the number of overseas students coming to Ireland to learn English, according to the representative organisation for language schools.
DavidO’Grady, chief executive of Marketing English in Ireland (MEI),s aid some schools’ international bookings had fallen by as much as 50 per cent. The MEI figures contradict statements by Fáilte Ireland, which last week predicted that bookings for 2009 would be almost on a par with last year. The tourism body estimated that 116,000 students came to Ireland in 2008,and predicted that more than 100,000 overseas students would arrive this year.
However, O ’Grady said that was not happening. ‘‘There has been a huge drop,” he said, citing the fall in the value of sterling and the difficulties non-EU students faced obtaining visas to Ireland as the main obstacles facing the international education sector.
The sector was estimated to be worth €500 million to the Irish economy in a 2007 report by Indecon consultants, but O’Grady said it was now bracing itself for a number of school closures and staff lay-offs. ‘‘Most of the EU is in recession, so the UK has a huge price advantage at the moment,” he said. He said that obtaining study visas to Ireland was also very difficult, and this had ‘‘stymied our growth’’ in emerging markets. ‘‘Whole swathes of the planet are effectively barred to us, including countries like Libya and Saudi Arabia - who send thousands of students abroad on government scholarships each year. They don’t work and they pay top dollar. We face similar problems in emerging markets like Russia and Vietnam.”
O’Grady said that Ireland’s competitor markets such as New Zealand and Australia did not face the same obstacles. ‘‘There is a risk that we will miss the boat altogether in emerging markets. What is maddening is that it is so unnecessary,” he said.
He said that other EU states were also improving their own infrastructure to facilitate English being taught to students in their home countries. ‘‘We are therefore confined to a dwindling market. The demographics are also against us in Europe,” he said.
Concerns have also been expressed about the lack of regulation of the English language teaching sector, which employs an estimated 4,000 people in Ireland. Last year, the government scrapped plans to set up a statutory agency to promote and regulate the sector.
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