HC Deb 06 March 1957 vol 566 cc65-6W
96. Mr. Sorensen

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what liaison now exists between his Department and Colonial Governments in respect of assistance to their students in this country; how many Colonial Governments have now become responsible for their students compared with 1946; and approximately how many sponsored and unsponsored students and student nurses, respectively, have received their training in this country during the past 10 years.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd

Within the last three years the Governments of Cyprus. Hong Kong, Kenya, Nigeria, Malaya and Singapore, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, Tanganyika, Uganda, and the West Indies have established their own students units in London, and similar arrangements for Mauritius and Zanzibar are about complete. Liaison with these Governments on student affairs is through the heads of their students units, who meet members of my Department and of the British Council regularly on a co-ordinating committee. A liaison officer attached to my students branch sees to the personal welfare of students from the remaining smaller territories.

Since 1946 about 11,000 scholars and 22,500 private students have arrived in this country to take courses of full-time study. About 500 of the scholars were student nurses. I cannot say how many have come privately for nursing training but the number may well be of the order of five or six thousand.