That nothing compares to living in a country and being surrounded by the language day in, day out, is evident after a year abroad; my German came on better in my 5 months in Germany than at any point in the decade I’ve been learning it in the UK.[1]
The news that the UK is pulling out of the European Erasmus+ programme for education, training, youth and sport was the final gloomy burden loaded on 2020’s packhorse of pain. Many noted but few were surprised that the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had broken his promise not to risk the UK’s post-Brexit participation in Erasmus+. Just one more act of bad faith by a man whose career was founded on telling shameless lies about Europe and misleading British public opinion.
A few days after the news filtered out, the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, issued an oddly-timed press notice about the Turing Programme, which the Government had indicated would replace Erasmus+ across the UK.[2] The blustering lack of detail in the announcement, together with the absence of any signs of consultation with the devolved administrations in Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh, reflects, of course, the now well-known modus operandi of the Johnson Government and, particularly, his hapless Education Secretary. The Minister’s optimistic suggestion that ‘we have designed a truly international scheme’ scarcely masked the makeshift, impromptu quality of what he revealed. Observers have good reason to doubt not only the credibility of what little Williamson has announced, but also the long-term orientation of the Turing Programme.
In 1998-9, I was the UK’s education attaché in our then Permanent Representation to the European Union in Brussels and a member of the team that negotiated the renewal of the package of education, training and youth programmes that have in more recent years been called Erasmus+. In the first half of 1998, the UK had used its Presidency of the Council of Ministers to encourage debate about the future direction of the programme; the Commission’s proposal to the Council and the European Parliament emerged later that year. In line with the UK’s cross-party utilitarian consensus about the purpose of education and training, the UK had pushed for the new programmes to promote participants’ ‘employability’. The idea was that the education and youth programmes, like the vocational training programme, should be geared primarily to the needs of employers in the labour market. In subsequent years, a modification of this notion became part of the EU consensus, but it was very controversial at the time and still, in my view, should be. The negotiations in Council were lively enough, but the big battle was not between the fifteen governments, but between the Council and the European Parliament, which, encouraged by the Commission, wanted a very large increase in the overall budget.
In the negotiation, my instructions came formally from the then Department for Education and Employment in London, but the reality was that instructions and tactical advice on the budget emanated solely from the Treasury. As the Council haggled with the Parliament in the Conciliation Committee, I was in constant touch with the Treasury desk officer, who was (very effectively) orchestrating support for a tough line among like-minded finance ministries in the capitals of net-contributing member states. In the event, a compromise was reached, though the increase in the budget was not on the scale envisaged by the Parliament’s rapporteurs.
The pre-Christmas announcement that we are leaving the Erasmus+ programme has the fingerprints of the Treasury all over it. Indeed, neither the UK nor the EU negotiators in the trade talks disguised the reason for the failure to extend UK participation in the scheme: the UK is simply unwilling to pay its proportionate share of the (rising) programme costs. No doubt, the Treasury would also have been worried about the UK’s lack of control over future management of the budget: associated non-EU members of the programme have observer status only (i.e. without voting rights) on the programme committees.
Shorn of the need to concert even with likeminded finance ministries, the Treasury will have the upper hand over the scale and design of the new Turing Programme. Williamson’s announcement that the new programme will ‘deliver real value for money’ and will ‘benefit both our students and our employers’ is a heady sign of things to come. This programme will be shaped by Williamson’s extremist notion that the sole purpose of education is access to the labour market, and made subject to Treasury tightfistedness and doctrine.[3] We might rejoice at least that this is to be called the Turing Programme, rather than the Dyson Programme or the Tim Martin Scheme; but the philosophy and cost priorities are clear.
It’s also worth noting that the figures released don’t obviously add up.
The Government’s announcement says that the Turing programme will be ‘backed by over £100 million, providing funding for around 35,000 students in universities, colleges and schools to go on placements and exchanges overseas, starting in September 2021.’ There are three doubtful things about this. First, what does ‘backed by’ mean? Is this a commitment to public expenditure or a hint about some future co-funding arrangement? Secondly, what time period does this funding relate to? This isn’t a clear commitment to spend £100 million a year, or indeed over any specific time period. Thirdly, where does the figure of 35,000 students come from? In 2018/19, the UK exported 18,305 students and trainees to the rest of the EU under Erasmus+ and it imported 30,501 from the EU27 (48,806 ‘mobilities’ in total). The cost of this part of the programme was €145m (roughly £130m).[4] An annual budget of £100m for 35,000 students and trainees would not, therefore, be evidently out of kilter with the historical costs of Erasmus+. But note that the UK’s Turing scheme will fund only the export of UK students and trainees; it will not pay for incoming students from the EU or anywhere else. Since the global partnerships for the Turing scheme are not yet in place (and will be difficult to set up outside the established programme structures of Erasmus+) and the Department hasn’t released overall programme documents, let alone detailed application documents, it seems beyond optimism to imagine that the UK can double the number of annual participating students and trainees in the academic year beginning September 2021. Either the Government is overpromising and being unrealistic, or something undisclosed is hiding behind its announced figures and we are being misled.
The unilateral nature of the scheme proposed by the British Government gives additional cause for scepticism. At the heart of Erasmus+ are relationships and partnerships between the participating universities and between other participating organisations across the European Union. Under Erasmus+, European universities – to cite the best-known type of participating organisation – import and export students through a single budgetary framework and a common set of rules. UK universities will have to work harder, and cope with potentially competing bureaucratic requirements, if they are not only to export students under the Turing Programme, but also to continue to attract EU students under Erasmus+. The risk is that universities will be pulled in contrary directions and find it hard to sustain and build partnerships that work. The design and scope of a new national agency is important. It would be hard to get this right even at a normal time, let alone in the middle of an unabating pandemic.
The lamentable decision to pull out of Erasmus+ is only partly palliated by the promise (still vague and uncertain) about the new Turing Programme. Setting up something new and effective will take time and money. There is a real risk that UK universities – already reputationally damaged by Brexit and now facing the Government’s punitive immigration regime for EU students – will cease to attract Erasmus students. Since 2016, numbers are already substantially down and the UK has lost (to Spain) its position as the most popular country for Erasmus students.[5] The impact, direct and indirect, on UK universities and their local economies could be substantial.[6] But the narrowing of the British mind, if the Turing Programme does not prove a worthy successor and incoming Erasmus students dry up, would be a graver impact still.
John Kittmer
3 January 2021
[1] Statement to me by a recent Erasmus student.
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-turing-scheme-to-support-thousands-of-students-to-study-and-work-abroad
[3] Williamson is on record as saying, ‘We must never forget that the purpose of education is to give people the skills they need to get a good and meaningful job.’ https://www.indy100.com/news/gavin-williamson-education-secretary-university-tory-9612016
[4] https://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/factsheets/factsheet-uk-2019_en.html
[5] https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/uk-no-longer-top-erasmus-destination-for-students/
[6] Witnesses to a recent House of Lords enquiry about the future of UK participation in Erasmus+ argued that non-UK students ‘created a “global, outward-looking culture on campus”’, and ‘brought a “tangible economic benefit” to the UK through money spent on their courses and in the local economy of their place of study’. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldeucom/283/28305.htm
