Migrant panic as EU country moves to stop ‘backdoor immigration’ in nee crackdown | World | News
Ireland is preparing to crack down on “fake” English language schools being used as “back doors to immigration”. The new initiative comes as Dublin plans to reduce the total number of student visas issued for English language courses.
Higher Education Minister James Lawless said some schools were acting as a “tick box exercise” allowing people to obtain work permits. He confirmed that a new “quality mark” would be introduced for higher education institutions to stop abuse. These will be known as TrustEd Ireland and will enable schools to deliver real quality courses.
“To benefit from this award, to have this status, you have to meet certain minimum requirements, and these will include quite basic criteria,” the minister said.
“[Criteria includes] That you offer a course of very strong quality, that you provide a certain minimum number of hours, that you have a certain level of students enrolled in that course, among other things. “This is a quality check.”
He added that the quality mark would “ensure that these schools truly provide a quality educational service to their students and are not used as a convenient back door to immigration”.
The system will be applied to all colleges and universities that accept international students. Institutions will also need to pay taxes to receive the TrustEd quality mark.
Mr Lawless said the fee would act as a test of an organisation’s good faith. Irish Examiner reported.
“If a school is not a school, it’s probably not going to pay the tax and so it’s essentially taking itself out of the process,” he said.
The Minister announced that the fee will be calculated as a percentage of student intake and the money collected will be transferred to the education sector.
He argued that the accrued fees would essentially act as an insurance policy for students.
“We have seen in the past that schools collapse overnight and students are left helpless,” he said.
“There is a degree of insurance of the system against such market failures.”
