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Students undertake paid work placements in the UK for a variety of reasons. Some are looking to fund their stay in the country while also improving their language skills and getting to know a different culture while others are hoping to improve their employment prospects both at home and in the UK.
Jayne Stroud from The Training Partnership in Torquay says that paid work placements have “trebled in the last few years” and adds, “[They] seem to have taken over from the ‘gap year experience’. Previously the focus was on travel but now it is about looking for opportunities to live, work and understand the culture of a country while improving language skills and knowledge. Ultimately it is about breaking down barriers and extinguishing cultural myths.”
Joe Solomon, Manager of the Opus paid work programme at Kaplan Aspect in London, says that their programme has only existed for one year but “already demand has significantly increased”. He believes that demand will definitely continue to grow as students seek to refine their language skills in a real life situation. The future of the sector looks good, albeit with a question mark over payment practice (see News, page 45).
Providers of paid work programmes in the UK report that the majority of their students come from European Union (EU) countries whose citizens are able to work in the country without a visa. Stroud says, “The increase [in placements] has been significant in particular among the European community. There is a particularly large market in Spain and Italy for paid work placements and this may be an indication of the lack of employment opportunities in their own country.”
However, student visa holders can also undertake paid work placements if they are studying in the country for more than six months and, according to Solomon, interest for such programmes comes from a variety of student markets. “Work programmes are very popular with South Americans,” he says. “They are on a student visa, which they can only get if they are studying for six months minimum. We used to have visa issues last year and occasionally we still do but this year the immigration authorities seem to have been fairer in their judgements.”
Tommi Muttonen from Twin Group in London says that demand for their paid work programmes has switched from EU to non-EU student markets of late. “Traditionally strong markets, such as Poland, [have begun] to send students who are far more interested in developing their careers with an unpaid professional internship,” he says. “However, many of our non-European markets who book work placements through our Professional English Programme (PEP) sandwich course – especially Brazil, Korea and Thailand – generate strong and growing demand for paid work placements.”
Many paid work programmes on offer in the UK are combined with some sort of language tuition either before the actual work placement or, in some cases, running concurrently with it. The Twin PEP programme provides language tuition in either a four-, eight-, 12- or 16-week study period before a 22-week vocational placement followed by a further one-week period of study. The programme is also accredited by the National Council of Further Education and successful completion leads to an intermediate qualification in employment skills.
There is evidence that add-ons such as these can make the difference between success and failure in the sector. Stuart Blake from Intern-UK in Hayling Island says that they have offered paid work placements for international students for 12 years but will be concentrating on unpaid placements only from this year. He adds that while demand for paid placements “will never diminish”, the company specialised in managing group and individual internship programmes – rather than combined programmes with language tuition – which proved to be less profitable. “I could see us ending up more like an employment agency than an internship specialist,” says Blake. “That was definitely not where we wanted to be. Secondly, finding suitable paid placements with free accommodation and food was exacerbated by the expansion of Europe.”
In terms of the type of work placements on offer, the majority tend to focus around the hospitality sector, especially in areas such as London or the south coast where employers are always on the look-out for casual staff. However, most providers are hoping to expand their range of programmes in the future. “Our goal is to offer paid work in all sectors, [although] this is probably a few years away yet,” says Stroud. Muttonen also hopes to move into new sectors in the near future. “Expanding into the retail sector, both in terms of training courses and work placements, will be a major development for Twin Group in 2008,” he says.
MAKING CONTACTS
When it comes to offering paid work placements for international students, setting up the right contacts with employers is key. Neil Pick from Tellus Group, which to date only offers unpaid work placements with pocket money in the hotel sector, points out that sourcing the right employers for paid work options can be difficult. “I think there is a lot of interest in paid work – we get more enquiries every year – but breaking out of hospitality is very difficult as companies don’t want to pay the students for short-term stays,” he says.
Tommi Muttonen from Twin Group says that they are currently sourcing new placement employers in the retail sector. “Sourcing providers is quite simply a sales job, requiring the same skills set and investment in resources as international student recruitment,” he says.
Joe Solomon from Kaplan Aspect says that they have employers in both the hospitality and retail industries and relates a long list of methods used to find new contacts. “We source new payment providers through cold calling, referrals, business networking sessions, newspaper adverts and Internet adverts,” he says.
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