Population: 22 million

Youth population: 24% of the total

Youth unemployment rate: 25% (2023 estimate)

GDP: US$84.3 billion (2023)

Main economic sectors: Rubber processing; cultivation of tea, coconuts, tobacco, and other agricultural products; tourism; clothing and textiles; and mining.

Geography: Sri Lanka is an island nation in South Asia, south of India.

Official languages: Sinhala (spoken in the southern, western and central parts of the country), and Tamil (northern and eastern parts of the island).

Language of instruction: English is introduced alongside official Sri Lankan languages at kindergarten level and then incorporated consistently from Grade 1 in the state school system. In international schools it is the main medium of instruction. The Ministry of Education considers schools that offer all subjects in English to be “English-medium schools.” Those that offer only some subjects in English are termed “bilingual schools.” At the university level, about 80% of courses – especially in STEM – are only taught in English.

Tertiary enrolment rate: 21% (2023)

Literacy rate: 92%, one of the highest in Asia

English language proficiency: Low, according to the

Religions: Majority Buddhist, with 13% percent Hindu, 10% Muslim, and 7% Christian.

Main student cities: Colombo, Kandy, Galle, Jaffna, Trincomalee, Peradeniya, Nugegoda, Moratuwa, Kelaniya, Matara.

Economy: The economy grew by 5% in 2024 – the highest rate in seven years – following a prolonged economic crisis. That expansion beat an Asian Development Bank forecast of 2.4% growth for 2024, helped along by a debt restructuring plan with the International Monetary Fund. Growth was driven by a rebound in the industrial sector – particularly in construction, food and beverage manufacturing, and tourism. Inflation decreased to negative territory. While consumer confidence has been rising, food insecurity is still an issue for many families.

Outbound mobility

Sri Lanka is an increasingly important source of students for institutions all over the world, and it stands out as a hotspot of transnational partnerships, especially with UK universities.

In terms of outbound mobility, the number of Sri Lankan students in Australia grew by 41% between 2019 and 2024 to 19,000. Canada saw a massive jump – 443% more Sri Lankans were studying in Canadian programmes in 2023 than in 2019, for a total of 8,075.

The UK welcomed 5,500 Sri Lankan students in 2022/23 – up by 84% over the previous year and placing Sri Lanka just outside the Top 10 markets for UK universities (#11). Sri Lanka was for the UK in 2022/23.

Growth has been more moderate in the US. The 3,420 Sri Lankans in US higher education in 2023/24 represents a 7% increase over 2019.

Japan and Malaysia also host several thousand Sri Lankan students, and China is a major player as well. In April 2024, Chinese ambassador to Sri Lanka, Mr Qi Zhenhong, spoke at a ceremony awarding scholarships to Sri Lankan students at the Chinese embassy in Colombo: “Currently, over 1,200 Sri Lankan students go to China to study with full scholarships, one-time scholarships, and participate in short-term trainings every year.”

Sri Lankan governments are perennially challenged to balance relations with regional powerhouses India and China. There has been growing concern in the country about the scale of Chinese investments and loans to Sri Lanka, leaving the country vulnerable to Chinese influence and power.

Government supports transnational education

Higher education capacity in Sri Lanka is very limited. There are that offer free tuition and residence, and over 350,000 Sri Lankan students participate in A/Level examinations to try to gain entrance. In 2022, of the 172,000 students eligible for acceptance to a state university, only 42,000 students secured admission.

Overcapacity in the public system has led to the rise of private universities. There are now 27 private universities awarding degrees. They can enrol up to 60,000 students – which represents a good deal more capacity than state universities.

The government has made it a priority to expand tertiary access to Sri Lankans – and to encourage more Sri Lankans to remain at home for university studies to avoid brain drain. It actively invites foreign institutions to partner with Sri Lankan universities in offering joint degrees and other collaborative activities. Of the thousands of Sri Lankans enrolled in private universities in their country, a large proportion are studying under a transnational education (TNE) model.

The Sri Lankan government is especially open to foreign universities offering medicine, engineering, business, finance, IT, and AI programmes.

Branch campuses just getting going

The UK is a major player in TNE in Sri Lanka – as it is in so many other countries. Sri Lankan students make up 10% of all UK TNE enrolments, making Sri Lanka the UK’s second largest TNE market. Interestingly, those enrolments are through UK/Sri Lankan partnerships, not through branch campuses. Of Sri Lankans enrolled in UK TNE, 92% are studying through collaborative provision and 8% are studying via distance/online, according to .

Forty-four UK institutions have TNE agreements with Sri Lankan universities, as do 22 Australian universities. The UK enrols many more Sri Lankan students than Australia via TNE (over 50,000 versus just over 3,000 in 2022/23, respectively).

As for branch campuses, there are less than a handful in Sri Lanka – so far. At the end of 2024, Perth-based Curtin University launched a campus in Colombo, consisting of purpose-built facilities at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT). Curtin plans to expand the programmes it has been offering for years to Sri Lankan students through other forms of TNE (engineering, computer science, and business studies) to include artificial intelligence, health, and humanities-related subjects.

Curtin University Colombo will also recruit students from , and it is set up to allow its students to transfer to Curtin’s other campuses in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, UAE, and Mauritius.

Curtin is the second Perth-based university to open a branch campus in Colombo. Edith Cowan University launched its campus in 2023 and offers programmes in biomedical science, cyber security, commerce, and more.

India and Sri Lanka have close economic and security ties, and India’s top-ranked engineering institute, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), was approved to open a branch campus in Kandy in 2024 (it hasn’t opened yet).

The growing importance of TNE

Sri Lanka has struggled for years with brain drain. It offers free education until the end of high school, but capacity issues in the tertiary system means the Sri Lankan government is not reaping ROI from its students given that so many either fail to gain entrance to a domestic university or leave the country for study abroad, often with a goal of permanent residency in the host country. According to a 2021 Institute for Health Policy Opinion Tracker Survey, 1 in 16 Sri Lankans had plans to migrate, and most of those wanting to leave are young people.

As Sri Lanka’s reports:

“While about 48 percent of the age group of 18-29 years want to leave the country, about 53 percent of degree holders and 45 percent of A/Level qualification holders desire to migrate. Since the ‘educated youth’ represent the future workforce of a country and are crucial for its long-term progress, increased labour migration has posed a new threat to the country’s development.”

Push factors for Sri Lankan students include corruption, poor job prospects, and low wages.

TNE is an exciting prospect for many Sri Lankan students because it is more affordable and confers a high-quality degree. But a fractured political environment in Sri Lanka and still-fragile economic conditions must greatly improve if more Sri Lankan graduates are to decide to stay in their country to work.

For now, Sri Lankans are tempted by the prospect they see every day on billboards in their city to start their studies at home then move abroad. Last year, in Canada’s . author Randy Boyagoda wrote:

“’Start in Sri Lanka, finish in Australia!’ These were phrases from just two of the many, many billboards advertising opportunities for international higher education that I saw on Sri Lankan highways and throughout Colombo. I also drove past buildings that housed local offices for overseas universities, and for international university consortiums with local campuses, and for professional agencies promising assistance for students hoping to study in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the U.K., Belarus, and yes, Canada. While not nearly as large a source country for international university students as India or China, Sri Lanka clearly was a place of interest in this massive global business.”

For additional background, please see:

• “Continued growth reported for UK transnational education enrolments”
• “Higher education demand/supply gap a major driver of Sri Lankan outbound student mobility”

The post Recruiting in Sri Lanka: Demand for study abroad remains high; TNE poised for further growth appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

UNESCO estimates that 29,000 Sri Lankans were studying abroad in higher education institutions in 2020, mostly in Australia (roughly 10,500), Japan (5,500), US (3,100), Malaysia (2,400), and UK (1,300). But recent growth in some destinations suggests that the number of Sri Lankans abroad has already exceeded the British Council’s prediction.

For example:

• There were over 5,000 Sri Lankans in Canada in 2022, mostly in universities and colleges, up 94% over the previous year. In 2020, UNESCO counted only 875 in Canadian post-secondary institutions.

• A total of 12,170 Sri Lankan students were enrolled across Australia’s education system as of the latest .

• Sri Lanka was one of the top three fastest growing markets for UK universities in 2022, with growth of +41.3%. A total of 5,761 study visas were granted to Sri Lankan students in 2023.

Demand factors

A significant drag on demand from Sri Lanka comes in the form of the struggling Sri Lankan economy. Over the past two years, Sri Lanka has faced its worst financial crisis in decades and in Q1 2023, the economy contracted by 11.5%. Last year, the country was rocked by widespread protests (known as ) as a result of public dissatisfaction with how the government was handling the crisis.

Affordability is thus key for Sri Lankan students, and many destination countries are offering than ever to enable Sri Lankans to study abroad. Still, many Sri Lankan students enrolled abroad struggled to pay their tuition last year.

Along with scholarship support, work placements and opportunities to gain permanent residency abroad are major factors influencing the decision making of Sri Lankan students. The UK and Canada have grown much more competitive in Sri Lanka as a result of their post-graduation work programmes.

Despite economic turmoil, Sri Lanka offers a huge recruiting pool for foreign universities given the expansion of its higher education system that has been driven largely by a significant increase in branch campuses and TNE activity in general. Sri Lanka is the third largest TNE market for the UK after only China and Malaysia. Australia is also actively pursuing TNE in Sri Lanka and has developed a specialty in articulation arrangements that offer students a cost-effective way of getting an Australian university credential. For example, Sri Lanka’s Horizon Campus has partnered with Australia’s La Trobe University to allow Sri Lankan students to complete the first year of their degree program at home before travelling to La Trobe for the second year. This partnership, , saves participating students approximately 18 million rupees – a huge deal in this time of economic downturn in their country.

Limited capacity in local universities is also a push factor for outbound mobility from Sri Lanka. There are only 17 state universities in the country. Of the roughly 350,000 Sri Lankans who sit A-level examinations every year, only 42,000 students are admitted. The government considers attracting new foreign branch campuses to be key to dealing with the crunch, but branch campuses alone will not be enough to meet burgeoning demand among Sri Lankan students for quality higher education.

For additional background, please see:

• “Economic crisis at home pressures Sri Lankan students abroad”
• “Income growth continues to drive demand for study abroad in Sri Lanka”

The post Higher education supply-demand gap a major driver of Sri Lankan outbound student mobility appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

The country’s financial troubles have been exacerbated by the pandemic, which discouraged tourism (a key source of foreign funds) and, more recently, by the war in Ukraine and its inflationary impact on commodities and food prices. But the root of the crisis can be traced back to years of mismanagement by successive national governments, and to an underlying “twin deficit” issue in the Sri Lankan economy. The country has, on the one hand, a budgetary deficit — that is, it spends beyond its revenues and is carrying very high levels of foreign debt — but also a current account deficit, meaning that it imports more than exports.

Anger against the government’s handling of the economy spilled over earlier this month when protestors clashed with police. In a March 2022 evaluation of the Sri Lankan economy, the said that, “Sri Lanka [is] experiencing a combined balance of payments and sovereign debt crisis. In [IMF] staff’s view, public debt has become unsustainable, and gross reserves are critically low and insufficient to cover near-term debt service needs. While the authorities’ efforts to raise new FX [foreign currency] financing could provide breathing space in the short term, it remains unclear how the large FX debt service obligations beyond 2022 can be met.”

Students struggle to pay fees

With costs rising at home and with foreign currency controls in place – not to mention that foreign funds are now also much more expensive to obtain – more Sri Lankan students are struggling to pay fees for their continuing studies abroad.

Lucknow, UP | Kathak students from Sri Lanka worry about their families in their home country amid economic crisis

“It’s tough for our parents to send money for us to study here. I hope there can be a situation when I can go back. We support protest against govt,” said a student

— ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP)

Media reports in Canada, where roughly 3,000 Sri Lankan students are currently enrolled, cite examples such as third-year Biology student Dehan Kumburugala has had to abandon his pre-med studies and make plans to return home due to the worsening crisis. “With the critical state that Sri Lanka is in, it’s way too tough on paying the tuition fees…With no source in Canada willing to help, completing my degree is not a possibility,” Mr Kumburugala told .

As local relief efforts continue to ramp up for students and their families, other students report that their parents can no longer send funds to support their studies due to the collapse of the rupee.

We understand that this is an incredibly stressful and challenging time for our fellow Sri Lankan students.
We have compiled some helpful helpline numbers. If you have any concerns or challenges, please reach out to them. Also, share this post and support the community.

— The Lygon Group (@TheLygonGroup)

Growth interrupted?

It remains to be seen how the current crisis will impact outbound mobility in the medium-to-long term. But Sri Lanka has been widely pegged as an important South Asian growth market for student recruitment. The numbers of Sri Lankan students abroad have swelled in recent years, roughly doubling in the five years leading up to the pandemic to reach more than 30,000 students abroad in 2019.

For example, Canada, which is home to a large Sri Lankan diaspora, saw its numbers grow by more than 65% between 2020 and 2021 alone.

More broadly, the majority of Sri Lankan students abroad opt to study in Australia, the US, Canada, or the UK, with a growing proportion also hosted by other destinations within Asia, notably India and Malaysia.

For additional background, please see:

• “Recruiting in Sri Lanka“
• “Income growth continues to drive demand for study abroad in Sri Lanka“

The post Economic crisis at home pressures Sri Lankan students abroad appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

With that caveat firmly in place, the UNESCO numbers, which tend to capture mainly students going abroad for higher education, still reflect a near doubling of outbound students over the past decade with just under 18,000 Sri Lankans studying abroad in 2016.

Many market watchers, however, would also note Sri Lanka as among the fastest-growing emerging markets in the region. As we have highlighted in some of our recent coverage, the country has very strong fundamentals that will continue to drive demand for study abroad, including a large and growing college-aged population and brisk economic growth.

The British Council has also tagged Sri Lanka as a market on the move in its latest outlook report. Sri Lanka is expected to have one of the fastest-growing territory enrolments in the world, with average annual growth of about 4.5% through 2027. The British Council also projects that outbound mobility from Sri Lanka will exceed 32,000 students by 2027, a roughly 80% increase over the current UNESCO benchmark.

The majority of Sri Lankan students abroad opt to study in Australia, the US, or the UK, with a growing proportion also hosted by other destinations within Asia, notably India and Malaysia. Our recent discussion with Mohamed Sarjun Saleem reveals however that further shifts in demand are afoot as the market continues to expand. Mr Saleem is the Managing Director of the British Institute of Business Management Studies, an education institution and agency located in Colombo, Sri Lanka. We sat down with him recently for his views on this important sending market, and in our first interview segment below he highlights the growing popularity of European destinations among Sri Lankan students.

Mr Saleem notes that higher education provision continues to expand in Sri Lanka, in part through an increasing field of international branch campuses or international degrees offered in partnership with local providers. However, he adds that demand for study abroad continues to grow in part because Sri Lankan parents want their kids to have an experience in a multicultural environment and to exposed to new cultures, technologies, and ideas.

Our second interview segment below further highlights the value that Sri Lankan families place on higher education and how this is helping to shape both higher education provision within the country as well as a trends in study abroad.

Mr Saleem goes on to note the importance of local agents in recruiting in Sri Lanka, and of the importance of scholarship support as well as practicum or work placements in the decision making of Sri Lankan students.

In our final interview excerpt below, Mr Saleem comments on the relevance of the international schools sector in Sri Lanka, as well as the importance of missions in-country for overseas educators. “January and February and June-July are the best times of year to visit,” he advises, cautioning as well that, “If any institutions want to do some kind of promotions or workshops or seminars, it’s best in contact with the local agent, to organise something and to get an effective result.”

For additional background, please see:

• “Income growth continues to drive demand for study abroad in Sri Lanka”
• “Surprise Sri Lankan election result promises new education ties and investment”
• “Market Snapshot: Sri Lanka”

The post Recruiting in Sri Lanka appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

The market is also being shaped by a hot economy. Aside from notable dips in 2009 and 2013, GDP growth has been trending between 6% and 9% per year for the past decade. By some estimates, Sri Lanka will have the highest annual percentage growth in household income over the next decade at 5.8% per year, outstripping other notable emerging economies such as Vietnam (5.5%) and Indonesia (4.3%). This growth comes against a low base, however, and Sri Lanka has only just passed through the US$10,000 GDP per capita benchmark that is often seen as the tipping point for purchasing power and the growth of the middle class in emerging markets. “Many of the countries that are experiencing strong growth in GDP overall and in the middle class are economically well-positioned for strong growth in their tertiary enrolments and therefore outbound student numbers,” says a recent report from the British Council. “These include China, Colombia, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.”

“There is a restricted number of places at the better local universities,” agrees Chris Price, the CEO of Adventus Education and an international education advisor who has worked extensively in Sri Lanka in recent years. “So what you tend to find is that families are still investing heavily in their children’s education overseas. Having an international education is seen as a very prestigious thing.”

For educators approaching the market for the first time, or in the early stages of building an enrolment base from Sri Lanka, Mr Price recommends a focus on the country’s top private and international schools. He also points out that for many recruiters, Sri Lanka can be part of a broader regional effort. “I don’t know an institution that is not active in India. And you can jump on a plane and be in Colombo in an hour from Bangalore, and two-and-a-half hours from Delhi.” Facebook is an important channel for reaching Sri Lankan students as the platform is widely used in the country, and Mr Price stresses as well the importance of local staff, whether in the form of a qualified agent or Sri Lankan staff hired directly by an overseas institution that can support local students and families and represent the institution in-country throughout the year.

Opening up to new destinations

Because of strong historical ties to Britain – the country was a British colony until 1972 – the UK has long been a leading study destination for Sri Lankans. However, Australia is now the clear leader, owing both to the expansion of marketing and recruitment on the part of Australian institutions and a declining interest in the UK in the wake of more restrictive immigration policies there.

It seems clear as well that the market is opening up to new destinations as it continues to grow. Mr Price indicates an increasing interest in Canada and the US, both of which offer opportunities for students to stay on and work, and perhaps even immigrate, after graduation. But Sri Lankan students are looking also at destinations in Europe, often for very specific programmes of study (such as engineering degrees in Germany or technology studies in Ireland), and many are also choosing regional destinations as well, such as Malaysia, Singapore, and India.

Such intra-regional movements are often not well counted in official mobility statistics, and this makes accurate, contemporary figures hard to come by in a market like Sri Lanka. Based on his observations of the market, Mr Price estimates the current level of outbound “in the region of 50,000 students per year,” with the vast majority of those students pursuing undergraduate degrees abroad.

There is also a brisk trade in transnational education (TNE) programmes in Sri Lanka, with an increasing field of foreign institutions delivering part of all of their degree programmes in-country. In effect, this sets up a couple of broad tiers in the market with wealthier families sending their students abroad for complete degree programmes and a further segment of demand for the more affordable option of completing two years (or more) of an undergraduate degree locally.

This reflects in part the earlier point regarding the US$10,000 GDP benchmark for purchasing power. As average income levels in Sri Lanka continue to grow through 2020 and beyond, demand for education is also expected to expand further. “This [lower household income base] is likely to constrain how soon [emerging markets] close the gap in tertiary enrolment rates on advanced economies,” adds a related British Council . “But it does also mean the decade beyond 2020 should see continued rises in enrolment ratios and strong growth in tertiary education demand.” In simpler terms, the increasing outbound numbers we see in Sri Lanka today may be only the start of a larger growth curve over the next 10 to 15 years.

Spending on higher education

Once we start looking at a time horizon of a decade or more, the question of the capacity of the Sri Lankan system comes back into focus as an important factor in shaping those longer-term trends in the market. Students were a significant factor in electing Sri Lanka’s new government in January 2015; they provided strong support at the polls and had long protested the poor state of public education in their country. The new administration, headed by President Maithripala Sirisena, offered a unifying vision for the country’s various ethnic and religious groups, and it has painted an optimistic picture for the future of higher education in Sri Lanka.

Most recently, the government has promised . This is a notable development as government spending on education has been modest for years. In fact, , Sri Lanka ranks among the world’s lowest spenders on education, behind countries like Eritrea and Chad and just above Central African Republic and Zambia.

But the government has promised a four-fold increase to the education budget in 2016 (from 1.7% of GDP to 5.6%) and to increase spending on universities by 30%. For its part, UNESCO has recommended an expenditure level for Sri Lanka equivalent to 6% of GDP, which Sri Lanka has said it aims to reach by 2020.

The role of private providers

Echoing the approach in other emerging markets, the government appears to also be looking to the private sector to help address local capacity challenges. Higher Education Minister Lakshman Kiriella has said that the government believes more private universities are needed to improve Sri Lankan education. On a recent trip to Qatar, where more than 125,000 Sri Lankans have emigrated, he asked educational professionals there to explore the possibilities of . He has since hinted that several foreign universities have expressed interest. As yet no approval has been given for branch campuses but more detailed discussions are slated to occur.

What seems clear for the moment is that the government of President Sirisena has broken with the spending patterns of the past regarding education. The budget has been approved and there is broad agreement that the country should transition to a knowledge-based economy. As the President said in February, “The present government has allocated funds from the budget for the education sector in a way that no other previous government did.” Time will tell how this new spending will translate into expanded access to university within Sri Lanka, and the role that both private and foreign providers will play in meeting the growing demand for higher education in the country.

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The election result ended incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa’s bid for a third term. Mr Rajapaksa won the last election in 2010, surfing a wave of popularity months after the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels. With the war over, the economy strong, and his popularity riding high, Mr Rajapaksa called a snap election. As the result of a late surge of support among younger voters and others discontented with Mr Rajapaksa’s growing authoritarianism, . He has since assembled a governing coalition of ethnic, religious, Marxist and centre-right parties.

Like his predecessor, Mr Sirisena is from the majority Sinhala Buddhist community, but he has notably reached out to ethnic minority Tamils and Muslims in the country. In his acceptance speech, he promised to “maintain a close relationship with all countries and organisations.” In practise, however, his allies say he will rebalance the country’s foreign policy, which tilted heavily towards China in recent years and cold-shouldered India.

Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, head of the Center for Policy Alternatives () in Colombo, said the new president has pledged to re-engage with Western countries.

“He did make the point that the foreign policy was skewed in favor of the Chinese, over reliance and dependent on them and it needed to be recalibrated to restore balance,” Dr Saravanamuttu told Voice of America.

Students played key role in elections

Students, university lecturers, and others in the education sector played a key role in the election of Mr Sirisena. These factions were reliably among the most vocal critics of the previous government, due in part to former President Rajapaksa’s hard line against repeated calls by students for increased government investment into universities. A 2012 Economist article, for example, described who protested the former government’s slim investment in schools and universities – a paltry 1.9% of total GDP.

The former education minister, S.B. Dissanayake, responded to the lengthy strike by shutting down the country’s state universities and institutes. Students and academics were also angered by the former higher education ministry’s decree in 2011 that all universities must hire security from the defence ministry, which was headed by the former president’s brother. More ominously, University World News reported last year on the , including tactics such as attacking protests and threatening and targeting student leaders, according to the 69-page report State Suppression Against Students’ Movement of Sri Lanka. The report detailed of suspension of student funding, banning student councils, suppressing classes and other action such as law suits, arrests, assaults, threats, assassinations, and abductions involving students.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, students backed Mr Sirisena in large numbers. The overall participation rate in last month’s presidential election was 81%, a record for Sri Lanka. Mr Sirisena made to address the grievances of students and lecturers, including a promise that higher education would be completely restructured to develop the human resources necessary for an “inventive economy” and a pledge to raise spending on education to 6% of GDP.

The new government has already moved forward with several key reforms. The higher education minister, Dr Rajiva Wijesinha, has given the green light to allow private universities to be established, saying private universities are essential in order to provide education opportunities for all students. University World News also reported recently that the new minister has suspended the controversial three-week compulsory military-led University Leadership Training Programme, or MLTP, for university students. The army training had resulted in at least three deaths in recent years and was deeply unpopular among student and teacher unions.

UK, Australia, India eye new opportunities

International partners have been quick to praise the new government. Last month, US Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal visited Colombo to meet with Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, who repeated a message from his government since its surprise victory January 8.

“We want to raise the relationship between our two countries to a new level of cordiality,” Mr Samaraweera said, in a report by Voice of America. Ms Biswal said Sri Lanka could count on the US to be a partner and friend “in the way forward.”

The United States continues to be a key study destination for Sri Lankan students. Of the 16,204 Sri Lanka students who studied abroad in 2012, UNESCO reports that 2,811 studied in the United States (, according to World Education News and Reviews). However, the UK (3,516 students in 2012) and Australia (3,423) remain the top destinations for Sri Lankans, partly due to colonial ties, in the case of the UK, and proximity for Australia, but also because both countries are consistently active in recruiting in the country and offer scholarship programmes targeted to Sri Lanka students.

Australia sees Sri Lanka as a small but important market, with whom it shares a strong bilateral relationship. A number of Australian tertiary providers currently operate distance education facilities in Sri Lanka, including Monash College, an affiliate of Monash University, and the Australian College of Business and Technology, an affiliate of Edith Cowan University. , the Australian government’s trade and development arm, has highlighted growing recruitment opportunities in Sri Lankan schools for Australian providers. In a recent trade visit to Colombo International School organised by Austrade, 19 institutions were briefed about the Sri Lankan market and met with local students, parents, and teachers.

India, which hosts the fourth-largest number of Sri Lankan students abroad (1,115 in 2012) and is keen to develop stronger ties with its strategically located neighbour, is now to promising Sri Lankans to study undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D degrees in a variety of fields. With the Nehru Memorial Scholarship Scheme, Maulana Azad Scholarship Scheme, Rajiv Gandhi Scholarship Scheme, and the Commonwealth Scholarships, the South Asian giant aims to further deepen relations between top Sri Lankan students and India.

As we reported earlier, with only 23,000 of 220,000 Sri Lankan students who sit university entrance examinations admitted to state universities each year, many of those who can afford to do so have traditionally looked further afield for study. With a new government sending strong signals about increased government investments in the education sector, and the ease of restrictions on new private providers, the country’s higher education capacity looks likely to increase in the years ahead. The signs are encouraging for outbound mobility as well, particularly if Sri Lanka is successful in building stronger international ties and in promoting greater harmony at home.

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The 2013 study, the third edition of EF’s English Proficiency Index, ranks 60 countries and territories around the world by adult English proficiency.

While EF has been gathering proficiency data for several years, there are some important methodological changes reflected in the 2013 rankings. Seven countries – Estonia, Iraq, Jordan, Latvia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, and the Ukraine – have been included in the index for the first time. Three others (the Dominican Republic, Pakistan, and Syria) have been dropped from the index due to insufficient data. And whereas previous editions of the EPI have relied on multi-year data sets gathered between 2007 and 2011, the 2013 ranking is based on a single-year’s worth of test data from 750,000 adults who took English tests administered by EF over 2012. EF notes the move to single-year data reporting is meant to allow the EPI to track changes in English proficiency more closely year-over-year.

EF has noted in the past that its test data reflects the patterns seen in smaller, more scientifically controlled studies. However, one necessary caveat in interpreting the EPI rankings is that the EPI is not a statistically controlled study. The test subjects completed a free test online on a voluntary basis and as such, may not entirely reflect the overall English proficiency of a given country.

As has noted of previous EPI reports:

“[The test subjects] were by definition connected to the Internet and interested in testing their English…The test will obviously not reach poor and rural folk who lack Internet access. So if a country has an urban elite who are good with English, and a lot of rural poor people who cannot take the test, its score might be relatively inflated. In another country where nearly everyone is online but English skills are mediocre, the scores might be relatively depressed.”

Even so, the EPI is an ambitious global benchmarking study for English proficiency and the study report contains not only the 60-country ranking but also more in-depth country profiles, including regional breakdowns, for 11 major world markets.

Among its key findings for 2013, the EPI report notes:

• Some Asian countries, notably Indonesia and Vietnam, have realised significant gains in English proficiency since the tracking study began in 2007, and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) have seen real proficiency improvements as well.
• In contrast to most European states, English proficiency has declined in France over the survey period. As the report notes, “The seven countries with the strongest English are all small European nations, whose size compels them to adopt an international outlook.”
• The Middle East and North Africa are the world’s weakest regions in English, and poor levels of English-language proficiency is a persistent competitive disadvantage for Latin American economies. “More than half of the countries in [Latin America] are in the lowest EF EPI proficiency band,” notes the report.

The 28 top-ranked countries on the 60-country EPI ranking for 2013.

The 2013 EPI provides as well several headline-grabbing correlations between English proficiency and economic and social development. As the report notes:

“Historically, speaking a second language, or more specifically, speaking a highly valued second language, was a marker of the social and economic elite… However, globalisation, urbanisation, and the Internet have dramatically changed the role of English in the past 20 years. Today, English proficiency can hardly be thought of as an economic advantage at all. It is certainly no longer a marker of the elite. Instead it is increasingly becoming a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, in the same way that literacy has been transformed in the last two centuries from an elite privilege into a basic requirement for informed citizenship.”

EF reports positive correlations between national EPI scores and such indicators as exports per capita, gross national income per capita, service exports, and quality of life. Writing in the Harvard Business Review EF Senior Vice President Christopher McCormick adds:

“Research shows a direct correlation between the English skills of a population and the economic performance of the country. Indicators like gross national income (GNI) and GDP go up… [The 2013 EPI] found that in almost every one of the 60 countries and territories surveyed, a rise in English proficiency was connected with a rise in per capita income. And on an individual level, recruiters and HR managers around the world report that job seekers with exceptional English compared to their country’s level earned 30-50% higher salaries.”

The 2013 report observes a weaker correlation to quality of life indicators such as life expectancy, literacy, and standards of living, and acknowledges that the link between English proficiency and human development is “more tenuous.” Countries that rank in the low and very low proficiency bands on the EPI reflect variable quality of life indicators. However, EF notes that no country ranked in the moderate or higher proficiency bands falls below the “Very High Human Development” benchmark on the Human Development Index.

The relationship between national EPI scores and corresponding rankings on the Human Development Index.

EF attributes the correlation between English proficiency and economic development (and so on to social development) to the important role that English skills play in driving export economies, attracting foreign investment, boosting service exports, and enabling international business and cultural links.

The report concludes by outlining some international best practices for building English proficiency. These can be understood as observed characteristics of countries with high EPI scores and include the following:

• Making English skills development part of the core curriculum in schools;
• Investing in English-language teacher training;
• Including testing for English proficiency in national exams, including completion and entrance exams at the secondary and post-secondary levels;
• Setting national standards for English training programmes.

Much attention will be given to the national rankings in the EPI, and how the fortunes of individual countries rise or fall from year to year. However, these broader linkages between English proficiency and development – not to mention between English skills, investment in language training, and related government and education policy – are at least as interesting. These indicators can all reflect a country’s progress in strengthening its English proficiency but also its potential and characteristics as an international education market for the long term.

Check out ���Ϲ��� Monitor’s Language Learning category.

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Perhaps this is what drives their ambition to become the education hub of South Asia, hoping to draw thousands of students from India, China, Africa and beyond. But this goal will not be achieved easily or swiftly, and the Sri Lankan government has much work ahead to update their higher education facilities and re-vamp their system.

���Ϲ��� Monitor presents a thorough market report below, including insights from local experts.

Sri Lanka’s education system

Sri Lanka offers free schooling to all students, starting from primary school at age five through to university. The education system is divided into primary, junior secondary, senior secondary, collegiate and tertiary. There are 9,905 functioning government schools with a total student population of 4,004,086 and enrolling 105,127 undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Schooling is compulsory up to age 14 (junior secondary Grade 9) and there is a high attendance rate for school-age children, which can be seen in their impressive literacy rate: 91%.

In senior secondary school, students take the GCE O Level exams and in the collegiate level, students sit for the GCE A Level exams. are taken by hundreds of thousands of students each year, many of whom are hoping for a place at university.

Disappointment for some, opportunity for others

Unfortunately for those students, most are not able to attend a state university as places are limited and competition fierce.

According to the University World News “ out of the 220,000 who sit the university entrance (A-level) examination every year.”

This, of course, means opportunity for other education providers.

Universities in other countries benefit as up to 12,000 Sri Lankan students go abroad each year to study, meaning Sri Lanka could be a lucrative recruitment market for some. Australia, for example, has identified Sri Lanka as a priority market, recently sending representatives from 19 Australian institutions on a there.

Chris Price, Principal Advisor of student recruitment agency Adventus Education explains that Sri Lankans attending universities overseas fall into two brackets:

• Elite students who wish to attend the world’s top universities and have the qualifications and means to do so;
• Students who wish to study overseas but are of more limited means.

“These latter students tend to shop around and are more open to ideas on destinations and institutions that suit their financial situations. These are also the students who would consider attending local branch campuses (provided they are of quality and not just franchises). But any such options will be popular with the more price sensitive section of the market that wishes to have an international degree but cannot travel for some reason.”

The Sri Lankan government wants to curtail this study abroad trend, as upwards of goes out of the country along with those students. Therefore, it is taking steps to ensure Sri Lankans have a wider variety of education options to entice them to stay and study at home.

Both University World News and Daily News reported on the government’s announcement that 25 new university colleges focusing on technical and vocational education will be established to “cater to students who fail to gain entry to state universities.” Ten of those are supposed to be opening up by the end of this year.

“The ground-breaking move will provide job-oriented courses… with the intention of preparing them for the modern, high-tech employment market.”

Along with offering a more practical, skills-based education to keep students around, the government is intent on luring foreign education providers to Sri Lanka’s shores to set up branch campuses, the idea being that local students will be able to get a foreign education not far from home.

To learn more about what the locals think of this, ���Ϲ��� Monitor spoke to Dr Punarjeeva Karunanayake, CEO of , a private higher education institute which provides American, British and Australian education programmes in Sri Lanka. He told us:

“I think Sri Lankan people really like the idea of branch campuses opening up, as long as they are reputable institutions. If the academic delivery, quality and student outcomes will be similar to those of the main campus, then the branch campus will be popular… especially for the ~197,000 Sri Lankan students who don’t get into a local university.”

Just last month the government announced a plan to set-up ‘’ for foreign universities and other education providers, which will provide them with land and tax breaks.

The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) is one of the first to take advantage of this inspiring offer, with plans to “finish construction of a new campus by June 2015 and to admit a first intake of students by September 2015.”

And apparently, already a number of other interested institutions have been submitting applications to undertake a similar venture.

As well as branch campuses, overseas institutions have been aligning with Sri Lankan ones to offer a foreign degree at a home campus.

Last year, Plymouth University in the UK partnered with Sri Lanka’s National School of Business Management (NSBM) to deliver programmes in Supply Chain & Operations, Business Management, Tourism & Hospitality, Accounting, Finance, and Marketing – all subjects that are in demand in Sri Lanka.

Will more options at home dampen a desire to study overseas? Dr Karunanayake doesn’t think so:

“I believe Sri Lankan students will continue to study abroad and this number will continue to increase as Sri Lanka is becoming a middle income country.

However, the branch campuses of these foreign universities will capture a group that is presently looking at non-academic professional programmes or vocational programmes as well as students needing financial support to pay for their foreign education. Those students who have been looking at studying in places like India, China or Russia will probably choose to stay at home as more branch campuses open and more foreign degrees become available at home.”

Tech development

At the FutureGov Forum in 2010, the Sri Lankan government announced a target of e-literacy for 75% of the population by 2016. In particular, the government said it aimed to bring Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability to rural areas. The Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga stated that “bridging the rural-urban divide was one of four priority areas where ICT is being deployed to spur growth and propel socio-economic development.”

Fast forward to summer 2013, and Daily News reports: “Technical education is expanding to rural areas” and “a technology stream was launched in 200 schools.” It is hoped that these efforts will help bolster the goal of 75% e-literacy by 2016.

Foreign providers could see this as an opportunity to help Sri Lanka achieve its ICT goals by providing assistance, and at the same time gain an in-road into the Sri Lankan market.

Japan has already spotted its chance – Sri Lanka’s Minister of Mass Media and Information Keheliya Rambukwella stated in August, “The Japanese government has extended assistance to establish an ICT network converting the whole country.”

Like many other nations, Sri Lanka sees the development of the ICT and technology-related sectors as a way to achieve economic growth. To that end, they have created “aimed at producing students with high quality skills in science and technology that focus on new industries.”

And it’s not a moment too soon according to a new report by the British Council titled “Skills development in South Asia: Trends in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.” The report alarmingly states that the region in question is “lacking 96 million of the 100 million trainees currently required to meet the requirements for continued economic growth.”

Mr Price concurs: “The new vocational and technical university college programmes will prove popular. Sri Lanka has a booming economy and there is a significant requirement for technical and vocational skills development.” He further added:

“A key opportunity for educational providers overseas revolves around joint programming and pathway models with local institutions along the lines of 2+2 arrangements and top-up degrees.”

More opportunities for language providers

Another area for development which foreign providers can look toward is English language teaching.

Along with the focus on developing ICT and vocational education to produce more employable graduates, the Sri Lankan government is keen to promote the (Singhala, Tamil, English) for undergraduates. They have said they recognise the importance “of strengthening English teaching and providing facilities for students to learn foreign languages in secondary schools.”

Following a pledge made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government, – “the Indian High Commission in Colombo, in January, announced plans for language labs to be set in each of Sri Lanka’s nine provinces.” The ‘English for All’ programme hopes to establish language learning centres in 1,000 schools nationwide in a bid to make English the country’s lingua franca and help narrow the divide between the Singhala majority and the Tamil minority.

English is to be the link-language across all ethnic groups in Sri Lanka.

The British Council is active there, promoting English language teaching and learning via a number of projects such as . With the current focus on becoming an education hub, other EFL providers might want to get in there now while there is still a chance.

Challenges around the education hub goal

The government of Sri Lanka has been vocal about its desire to become an education hub for South Asia.

In January 2012, a report titled “Sri Lanka as an Education Hub for International Students: the Road Ahead” was released by The World Bank and authored by distinguished international education experts John Fielden, Jane Knight and others.

The report is quite clear: it can be done, but they have a long road ahead.

Areas that need work include: updating accommodation and facilities, creating a Code of Good Practice for institutions to adhere to, and building a coherent, unified marketing strategy.

Mr Price explains:

“The better universities in Sri Lanka are ready to welcome international students into certain academic programmes now. But there is much to do across the board in terms of preparing and delivering the kind of services required for international students. The world’s most advanced nations in this field do a lot of extra work and spend considerable resources on ensuring internationalisation is a reality, not just something written into a mission statement.”

Dr Karunanayake agreed that certain local universities are already ready for international students, but he stressed:

“I believe that they need to understand the requirements of a fee-paying international student and his or her expectations. It is known that Sri Lankan universities are not very student centric, and this change will have to take place at the core of an institution before it can attract foreign students.”

The government has already begun its move to attract foreigners by offering to students from certain countries. They’ve also increased the quota of foreign students allowed on local campuses from .5% to 5% of the total student intake.

They aren’t shy about why they are doing it either. As reported by University World News: “We’re doing our best to promote our country and bring in foreign income. We hope about 1,000 Chinese undergraduates will arrive here to pursue higher studies later this year,” Deputy Higher Education Minister Nandimithra Ekanayake said.

Work is underway to build ‘international standard’ accommodation to house the hoped-for foreign students. Daily News reported the Secretary to the Ministry of Higher Education Dr Sunil Jayantha Navaratne saying international students who study in Sri Lanka all live in various locations, and the new aim was to get them all living together “”

It’s going to take more than scholarships and space to get international students enrolled. A workshop which took place last summer (with the rather ponderous title “Re-creating and re-positioning of Sri Lankan universities to meet emerging opportunities and challenges in a globalised environment”) made a good number of needed before Sri Lanka has any hope of becoming an education hub. Some of these include:

• Increased, sustained funding to the quality of teaching, research culture, and physical environment of HEIs;
• Coordinated strategy to promote Sri Lanka between the Ministry of Tourism, the Board of Investment and the Department of Emigration & Immigration to make the country student-friendly;
• Outdated financial rules and regulations which have become a hindrance to entrepreneurial activity should be reviewed and revised;
• Introduction of appropriate multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary degree programmes with national and international appeal;
• Mode of delivery of courses should be shifted from teacher-centred education to student-centred education;
• Recruitment of overseas academics on a fixed term or indefinite basis should be encouraged;
• Websites of the HEIs should cater to the needs and interests of prospective foreign students and faculty;
• Each HEI should establish a Centre for International Affairs (CINTA) with properly trained staff and adequate resources to encourage and facilitate admission of foreign students, and to provide requisite student services.

With its beautiful countryside, friendly people and low cost of living, Sri Lanka may well become a destination for international students. And Sri Lankans themselves, highly literate and valuing education, may to stay to study if foreign degrees are offered locally. But first, there is work to be done.

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