Written question asked by Claire Curtis-Thomas (Labour) on Monday, 7 November 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 9 November 2005. It was answered by Gareth Thomas (Labour) on Thursday, 17 November 2005 on behalf of the Department for International Development.

Engineering Students

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development which countries sponsored engineering students through the British Council Education UK partnership in the last year for which figures are available; what the total budget allocated to (a) all training and (b) engineering-based training was; and what the (i) titles and (ii) length of the engineering courses undertaken were.

Answer: The information supplied by the British Council notes that the Education UK Partnership is a membership organisation, comprising 252 UK education institutions i.e. universities, colleges, independent colleges and schools and the British Council. The programme provides marketing services in 18 countries, which support the partners' individual marketing, recruitment and related strategies. Data is held at each individual higher institution and is not readily available from the institutions themselves.Nevertheless, using the information from the British Council, DFID has extracted some available data on overseas engineering and technology students studying in the UK. This information is for the year 2003–04 and the total number of engineering and technology students studying in the UK was 39,575 and were from 192 developing and developed countries of which, 3910 were from China, 3000 from Greece, 2515 from Malaysia, 2320 from India and 1480 from France.The total number of overseas students with no award or financial backing was 22,535.Further information of this scheme is available from the British Council.

Secondary information