CE: No, I’ve worked at the college for 17 years, so pre-merger. We’ve had our own transformation where three of the best colleges in North Wales came together to form the group. So I worked at what was Coleg Llandrillo before, but now I’ve got a group-wide role as international partnerships manager across the organisation. So I’ve been there for 17 years but in international for 18 months.

The PIE: How many international students do you teach across the group at the moment?

CE: In my college we’ve got about 56 full-time students. We tend to have a 50/50 split on our full-time provision, between English language provision, which is based at our Bangor campus, and then more academic provision in our Rhos-on-Sea campus. For English language, we tend to find people that are the partners and families of those that are doing their PhDs and postgrad at Bangor, so their families then come and learn English with us full-time.

The PIE: What is your ratio of international students at the moment, and what would you like to get it to?

“They like the fact that it’s already a bilingual community, so they’ve already got a head-start on the diversity!”

CE: Well we’ve got 27,000 students on our books and we’re in the 50s with our international. I suppose we’d look at it in terms of turnover and I think if we look at my area we’ve had about a 50% increase in turnover in the last year so I measure it in that way really. It’s a horrible phrase, that something has to ‘wash its face’; but to me that income I can now invest in other things in the years to come.

The PIE: And what do they all think about north Wales? Do you find people are surprised?

CE: Yes they are, but they like the language. They like the fact that it’s already a bilingual community, so they’ve already got a head-start on the diversity! Although I have to say north Wales isn’t as diverse and mixed a community as elsewhere, but I think that sometimes means that the international student’s made all the more welcome really because of it. We do use homestay a lot and we’ve got some really good homestay parents that have been with us for ages.

The PIE: Is your focus on trying to build up international curriculums in Wales or off-shore?

CE: We do have four main strands to what we do. We’ve got the English language teaching; our academic, full-time; we’ve also started doing training consultancy overseas, or incoming as well, so that would be in the vocational sector, supporting quality assurance and development in vocational colleges; and also short programmes – English study, traditional summer school type stuff – but often with a vocational twist as well. We’ve focused on leadership management for a university alumni group, hospitality and tourism for an ERASMUS group.

The PIE: And how do you promote those programmes?

CE: We’ve got a good track record in international, so really it was for me researching where those good relationships were, building on them, and at the same time, learning. It’s such a dynamic marketplace we’re in. It’s not just resting on your laurels and looking at what’s gone well before, but also identifying new areas where we can offer services. Our people are entirely reliant on our curriculum staff, whether it’s teaching the full-timers or the English language courses that we do, or engineering, anything. I’m entirely reliant on the curriculum teams to come up with the goodies.

The PIE: Have you inherited all of your relationships or have you gone about trying to make new ones?

CE: There’s one or two new ones. They tend to come about through the agents and again it’s reviving those academic partnerships. I’ve worked quite hard to do that because I think there was a period where we focused more on the training and vocational side, whereas to me the strength is going back to those schools. And as a person going out into those territories, which is new for me, I wanted to have people there that I knew as a start.

The PIE: What is on the horizon for the next twelve months for you? Where will you be going?

CE: East Asia certainly, we’re looking at Turkey and Malaysia, we’re already making good progress there. I have an international consultant as well. We’ve got a team of four staff across the two offices but we do have somebody who’s quite experienced in international work, who is looking at particularly Turkey as a completely new market for us, but one that has been identified as potential. He’s undertaking this scoping work and we’re hoping for our first full-time recruited student coming along this year! And hopefully he’s making a presence as well for other work.

“It’s a market that we know is declining and it’s tougher to do, but in terms of the value that the young people bring coming into our college, it’s fantastic for our own students”

The PIE: Do you deliver offshore?

CE: We’ve started doing that. We’re doing some quality assurance work with one of the awarding bodies. That’ll give us an introduction into a new country as well as one where we’ve already got presence, so that’s really good.

The PIE: Is your focus still on building new relationships and bringing new students?

CE: I think so. It’s a market that we know is declining and it’s tougher to do, but in terms of the value that the young people bring coming into our college, where we do have some limited diversity, and it’s fantastic for our own students to understand their different cultures and to look at their work ethic as well! And it’s great to see the friendships that build up. We’ve got a really, really bright student from Malaysia so I’m actually going with her to Bristol and Reading to her chosen university open days. She’s a year ahead in her application, she’s only just finished AS [Level], but just to do that sort of personal support.

The PIE: What’s she studying with you?

CE: She’s doing two A-Levels and a BTEC in Applied Law and she wants to go into law. We really want to do justice to her potential and make sure that in the university she’s not just another applicant, that they realise what talent she’s got. That’s why I’m making that special effort really.

The PIE: Do you do HNDs?

“There’s something out there in the marketplace where it’s not quite pressing all the buttons so we keep plodding on, keep tweaking the approach a little bit”

CE: We do foundation degrees, but we do HE as well. That’s largely validated by Bangor University but also by other universities. We’ve only got a handful of students on those programmes at the moment. We do a foundation pathway, and we’re recruiting for our third year of that, again validated by Bangor, and I’m still considering it as pilot phase, even though we’re coming up to the third year.

There’s something out there in the marketplace where it’s not quite pressing all the buttons so we keep plodding on, keep tweaking the approach a little bit to work at it because I know it’s a good programme and because of the Bangor input it’s academically focused, you know, rather than just being something to improve written English.

The PIE: So what would your advice be to other small colleges who are looking to get involved in international?

CE: I think you’ve got to have a buy-in from the top. When I was asked to take on the post I said well I’m only doing it if right from the chair of the Governors, the whole board, everybody is fully behind us doing international, because there is a cost to get you going. It’s not a quick, easy win that will replace government funding that might be disappearing. You’ve got to have the relationships with your curriculum people as well, your academics within your college, and be prepared for anything.