UK: English UK tours Get Brexit-Ready roadshow
English UK has held a series of workshops around the UK to help language schools and ELT providers prepare to navigate post-Brexit Britain. With stops in London, Bristol, Manchester and Edinburgh, the roadshow ran through likely scenarios for dealing with VAT, immigration and trends in the event of different Brexit outcomes. “We want to ensure the entire UK ELT industry is as well prepared as it can be for Brexit, with or without a deal,” Huan Japes, membership director of English UK, told The PIE News.
Patrik Pavlacic of Bonard noted the advantages ELT providers in countries like Ireland and Malta are likely to gain through Brexit and at how the Philippines is becoming a hot new destination for English learners in Asia, before recommending Colombia, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand and Brazil as source markets to watch out for. “The UK bounced back after three consecutive years of decline in 2017. We saw a two percentage point growth in student numbers, but a zero point nine decline in terms of student weeks. Again, this was still a better result than the aggregate data for the entire market,” he said. Pavlacic also discussed a recent poll Bonard conducted among around 200 agents on their views of Brexit. “One of the key takeaways was that we asked them whether they will increasingly promote English language courses in other destinations,” he explained.
English UK will continue to provide Brexit-related updates, including a response to the findings of the agent survey and a factsheet on GDPR post-Brexit, with some sessions from the roadshow being made available on film.
