Dr. Anthony Soares:

I am the director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, based in Armagh, which was established in 1999 to become an authoritative advocate for cross-border co-operation and a valued source of research, information and support for collaboration across borders on the island of Ireland, Europe and beyond. I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for the invitation to take part in this discussion on North-South student enrolment. I start by posing a question. Is there a shared understanding of the significance of North-South student mobility and of whether and why it should be encouraged and supported? Given that we are discussing North-South student enrolment, by a "shared understanding" I mean one that is arrived at by both Administrations on this island as well as by education providers and relevant stakeholders, including students themselves. I would argue that without such a shared understanding, it will be difficult to encourage and support increased North-South student mobility if, indeed, that is the desired outcome arrived at out of these discussions.

A clear signal that both Administrations recognise the importance of North-South student mobility and are committed to nurturing it would be to include co-operation on higher and further education within the remit of the North-South Ministerial Council. It would be the most appropriate platform from which the two Governments can ensure relevant policies and legislation in both jurisdictions are supportive of North-South student mobility. An existing example of this is the Higher Education Authority Act 2022. As recommended in the submission to this committee's pre-legislative scrutiny of that Bill by Universities Ireland, which the Centre for Cross Border Studies, as the secretariat for Universities Ireland, prepared, the Act sets out that one of the functions of Higher Education Authority, HEA, is to promote co-operation and collaboration with authorities and institutions in Northern Ireland, "including with regard to the provision of student places and the enrolment of students".

Equivalent legislative or policy prompts should be in place in Northern Ireland. This had been the case under Northern Ireland's higher education strategy, Graduating to Success, but it has not been replicated in more recent policy documents. Education providers need a positive policy context and political backing to give them the confidence and, crucially, the accompanying resources to invest in the development of North-South student mobility. I would argue that they also need evidence that prospective students are aware of the opportunities that exist in the other jurisdiction and would opt to study there rather than going elsewhere. In addition, policy in this area needs to take account of and expand on what is already happening in regard to North-South student mobility, which can often happen as a result of bilateral initiatives between institutions or as part of wider collaborations, such as the cross-Border further and higher education cluster for the north-west city region.

I will not rehearse the potential barriers to North-South student mobility, which the committee's recent report outlined. Instead, I finish by suggesting that we need to broaden the scope of North-South student mobility to include short-term mobilities as part of a student's course, cross-Border apprenticeships and vocational courses and cross-Border work placements. We also need to think about the role of distance learning. Crucially, we must understand how trends in North-South enrolments fit into wider trends of flows in student mobility and the changing make-up of student populations in higher education institutions across the islands of Ireland and Great Britain.