pa 243/5 ра
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
From the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
22 November 1985
Ja Marlain
307
Thank you for your letter of 6 November to Tim Raison enclosing one from the Reverend Oliver Simon about overseas student fees and Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees.
The Government fully recognises the value of overseas students and welcomes them. It is in our interest to attract high calibre students here for political, economic and commercial as well as academic reasons. We do this by carefully targeted award schemes rather than, as in the past, indiscriminate subsidy of all students from overseas.
To give full effect to this policy of targeted support the Government made available in February 1983, over a three-year period between 1983/84 and 1985/86, an additional £46 million for overseas students coming to Britain. This money has been used to expand the ODA's Technical Cooperation and Training Programme and the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. It has also been used to assist the British Council's work in promoting overseas the value and benefits of British higher education. This is particularly evident in the Council's Education Counselling Service which, with financial and other support from academic institutions, has successfully established operations in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.
New activities established with the additional money include the FCO's world-wide Scholarships and Awards Scheme and a number of special support schemes for certain countries that had traditionally sent large numbers of students here.
Malaysia benefits particularly well from this wide array of schemes. In 1984/85 £2 million was provided under the special Malaysian fee support scheme, enabling 800 students to study in Britain. A further 280 Malaysian students benefitted from awards under other Government and British Council programmes at an additional cost of £1.1 million. (The total number of
Malaysian students in the UK is around 6,500).
Alastair Goodlad Esq MP
House of Commons
LONDON
SW1A ORA
4KK 243/5 RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
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/Assistance
0 4 DEC 1985
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