Education technology is the key to attracting more foreign students

Australia must rapidly mobilise education technology to maintain its leading position in the international student market.

HolonIQ’s Marie Spies and Patrick Brothers.

Australia must rapidly mobilise education technology to maintain its leading position in the international student market, according to global education intelligence firm HolonIQ.

Even though Australia is poised to overtake Britain this year as the world’s second largest destination country for international students, the firm believes Australia’s current international education model — relying mainly on students studying on campuses in Australia — will not be able to meet the explosion in demand or keep up with market growth.

In the February edition of The Deal magazine, published with The Australian this Friday, HolonIQ forecasts the world will have a billion more school-age children by 2030 compared with today. Not only will they need schooling but also post-school education at universities or vocational colleges when they reach adulthood.

HolonIQ co-founder and managing director Patrick Brothers says the challenge of educating so many more young people can only be met by a rapid expansion of education technology that would enable the rapid scaling up of student numbers.

Mr Brothers believes Australian education institutions, which had nearly one million international students enrolled last year, have a huge opportunity that many are not aware of.

“I wish Australia would wake up to this opportunity. Australia is a leader in international education, it was an early mover,” Mr Brothers said.

“My fear is Australia will miss perhaps one of its greatest opportunities to leverage its competitive advantage — in educational areas where it’s already proven it’s a leader — for a lack of awareness of the opportunity.”

However, a ramp-up of technology in education does not mean that students will be taught by computers or that teachers will lose their jobs.

HolonIQ’s other co-founder and managing director, Maria Spies, says there is less concern than there used to be about teachers being displaced by technology. Instead, technology is seen as a way to multiply the impact teachers have.

“There are so many technologies that, at a school level, at a teacher level, at a classroom level, can save thousands of hours,” Ms Spies said.

She said another major opportunity for Australia was to digitise its vocational education and training system.

“It’s all scaffolded, it’s all mapped, it’s a stackable credential on a stick,” she said.

“Everybody in the world is talking about competency-based learning, but we’ve got it. Other countries would buy the architecture if it was a digitised system.”

Ms Spies and Mr Brothers, who were formerly executives at education company Navitas, said that 90 per cent of the world’s population under 30 lived in emerging markets.

They believe education and vocational training for these young people will in the future be dominated by on-demand training delivered on mobile devices.

The Deal is published on Friday