NZQA, the New Zealand government’s official quality assurance arm, said that CPE and NZQA would exchange best practice on the regulation of private education providers – but also on areas such as fee protection – through to 2016.

“NZQA values the opportunity to learn from other education organisations and how they apply best practice”

Singapore is a major international education hub and had 84,000 international students enrolled at its private and state-run schools, universities and colleges in July 2012.

However, this fell from 100,000 in 2008 after the government capped international student numbers and toughened its regulation of private operators, following an influx of students and rise in bogus businesses. Around half of the peninsula’s private operators were shut down.

New Zealand may be seeking to learn from the experience as it tries to attract more foreign students. It welcomed 100,000 international students last year but has ambitions to double education exports by 2025.

As part of the MOC, NZQA has already visited Singapore to explore how CPE regulates private education institutions (PEIs) through its EduTrust Certification scheme, which requires providers to adopt a fee protection scheme with CPE-nominated service providers and provide medical insurance for the duration of a course.

CPE meanwhile plans to visit New Zealand at the end of this month to observe an NZQA quality assurance review. In a statement NZQA’s chief executive, Dr Karen Poutasi, said: “NZQA values the opportunity to learn from other education organisations and how they apply best practice to raising the performance of tertiary organisations and promoting student achievement.”