Teaching Asians the Kiwi way

Foreign students are New Zealand's fifth-biggest export earner, but schools and universities know that the only way to gain a share of the market is to go out and grab it. Catherine Harris joins them in Thailand.

It's a hot dry day at a northern Thailand university where a contingent of neatly dressed Kiwis set up their booths promoting the best of the New Zealand lifestyle.

Banners with yellow sand beaches and glacial mountain rivers adorn the hall, rather ironically in a country that has plenty of stunning beaches and lush vegetation of its own.

But the students and education agents who will come here are not really looking for that. They are looking for a world-class education in English at the best possible price.

David Gillon, of Christchurch's Middleton Grange School, is in Thailand for his third successive year. Foreign education has become a significant income source for Middleton, which has a dedicated college for its 130 international students. The cheaper kiwi dollar is generating fresh interest.

"For Middleton it's not small money, so that's why we invest a lot of money into marketing and creating a good name."

Last year New Zealand received about 88,000 foreign students. While Australia now has nearly five times that number, New Zealand leads the world for foreign students per capita, and retains a large chunk of the secondary school-age market because parents see it as safe with good-quality education.

For every dollar those students spend on tuition, it's estimated they and their families spend another $1.70 in the wider community.

"There is a good story to tell here. We are seen as the Mr Nice Guys and those sort of qualities play pretty well in Southeast Asia," says Robert Stevens, chief executive of industry body Education New Zealand.

Export education suffered a hefty blow when the flow of Chinese students dried up several years ago. Yet it continues to bring in about $2.3 billion a year, about a quarter of the money that tourism generates.

Recently, Education Minister Anne Tolley announced she was injecting another $2 million for marketing international education, a big fillip for Education New Zealand, which gets by on a budget of $2.5m.

Mr Stevens has set what he considers is a feasible target of 10 per cent student growth for each of the next three years. "Tourism's discretionary income ... but education's not."

While some of the new money will go towards a big push at next year's Shanghai Expo to win back the Chinese, the industry is turning its gaze to alternative growth markets.

In Thailand, education was the first product New Zealand really became known for. While the average Thai rice farmer makes just NZ$500 a year, there is a growing middle and wealthy class among its 65 million people, and for them an overseas education or international school is the norm.

Demand for places at local English-speaking international schools is up, and like other Asian countries, competition for entry to university is fierce. New Zealand is cheaper than the international schools and has recently negotiated an equivalency between the NCEA and the Thai high school final year.

However, it has plenty of competition. Singapore is closer and the biggest rival, while England and America trade off the name of their top universities, and China and Korea are regarded as cool destinations.

Australia has also moved aggressively into the university market. So for Kiwi schools and institutions, meeting education agents and staging education fairs is vital in Asia, where relationship and trust is everything.

"If we try to compete with other countries, we're at a disadvantage on budget. If you look at how much Australia spends on international education compared to New Zealand, what we do is really just a drop in the ocean," says Tim Mahren Brown, director of Wellington-based language school the Campbell Institute.

"Where we can compete with other countries, where we're not at any disadvantage, in fact I think we're at an advantage, is relationship marketing. So that means building relationships with education agents, or institution to institution, with students and the parents of those students, because in that case size does not matter.

"It's not about budget, it's about the credibility of the person who's doing the market."

THAT day's fair in Chiang Mai attracts Thai student Tan Pawaradhisan, 13, who has spent two months at a Waikato high school and is considering going back "because I have many friends there and I want to see them again".

Tan, who wants to be a doctor, says going to New Zealand was a joint decision. His parents saw it as safe, but he also wanted to go somewhere more rural. He preferred the style of education in New Zealand because the teachers allowed him to explore "more things".

But unfortunately for Education New Zealand, which wants to encourage a "trickle up" of school students to tertiary level, he is likely to follow his peers in returning to Thailand for university, where they make the connections for marriage and business partners that will last a lifetime.

Other ethnic groups behave differently. Indians are often "migrant students" who join at tertiary level, but many Chinese graduates now believe they have better opportunities if they return home. Korean parents will send them overseas as young as 12, the youngest age New Zealand's code of practice allows.

Judy Lang, deputy principal of Chilton Saint James girls' school in Lower Hutt, says it's important to realise foreign students are not just a cash cow but also vital to the wellbeing of New Zealand students, since India and China are likely to be the leading world superpowers in years to come.

"Our young people in our high schools, in another 15 years, they are going to be working in these countries. So the new curriculum has got to have an Asian focus."

As well as importing students, the industry is looking at other options such as fly-in fly-out teaching, offshore campuses and distance learning.

Victoria University has taken a step further than most, setting up an offshore campus in Vietnam's Ho Chi Min City, with about 200 students. Business and English language are the only subjects offered, but Roger Armstrong, marketing and recruitment manager of Victoria International, says there is demand to expand into sciences.

"To some extent, it will be what we can manage that will determine how big it grows."

The four-year-old campus has yet turn a profit, but Mr Armstrong says it has won kudos in Vietnam, where there are not enough schools. "The Vietnamese government liked the fact that we are prepared to invest there rather than just take people from there to the benefit of us in New Zealand."

New Zealand institutions have been slow to follow Australia's lead on overseas campuses, Mr Armstrong says, "partly because we've seen some pretty major disasters where people have invested hugely in offshore campuses and closed them down. It can be fraught."

But there are benefits in gaining a good name in international education circles.

"We get reputation and to some extent funding from the size and quality of post-graduate work going on in the university and so to hold our place in the world ... we've got to somehow maintain a name and reputation that has an international significance, not just a domestic significance. If we can't do that, then in the long term it's not good news for us."

Catherine Harris travelled to Thailand with Education New Zealand assistance.

- © Fairfax NZ News