HC Deb 22 March 1935 vol 299 cc1483-4W
Mr. BROCKLEBANK

asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can make any statement regarding the progress of the committee on the education and training of students from overseas?

Mr. RUNCIMAN

The committee, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for North Bradford (Sir E. Ramsden) have made the following main recommendations:

  1. (a) That His Majesty's Government should encourage the flow and placing of carefully selected students from overseas, and that reciprocal relations with overseas countries should be established wherever possible in regard to the education and training of such students;
  2. (b) that, these functions should be jointly discharged for the time being by the Department of Overseas Trade and 1484 the Board of Education, and that in carrying out this work they should cooperate with organisations which already exist for these purposes;
  3. (c) that a committee representative of both industry and education should be set up to assist and advise the two Departments in carrying out these functions.

Since the Committee completed their investigations, His Majesty's Government have decided that the principal Departments interested in these and similar, activities concerned with educational and cultural relations with other countries should be represented on the governing body of the newly formed British Council for Relations with other Countries and that Parliament should be asked to make a grant to the council of £6,000 for the financial year 1935–36. It is proposed, that the measures outlined above recommended by the committee should form an integral part of the activities of the British Council for Relations with Other Countries, and a Standing Committee on Students will be constituted under the council. My hon. Friend the Member for North Bradford has, as one of the governing body of the British Council, undertaken the chairmanship of this standing committee. The Board of Education will assist the council in the work of placing students from overseas in educational institutions, and an officer of the Department of Overseas Trade, who was joint secretary to the committee on the Education and Training of Students from Overseas, is to be transferred on loan to the council for a period of two years.