³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ

That's good news, but the sector needs to continue to push hard to counter the students as immigrants theme. Particularly we must tackle both the rhetoric and some of the dubious data that gets repeated. So, on Monday when the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Secretary defended her proposal in the Commons, she relied on two main ideas. She said: "Of course we want people who wish to come here to do genuine degrees at proper educational establishments, but the Government have been clearing up the abuse that was allowed to run rife with student visas under the previous Labour Government, and 800 colleges are no longer able to take in overseas students. We want the brightest and best to come to the UK, and that is exactly what our policies are destined to do." The "Brightest and best" formulation has all the exactness you'd expect of a phrase taken from a hymn. Only wise men need apply. The other, ois the notion that 800 bogus colleges have been shut. She didn't say that on Monday, but the PM has. This isn't the case - 800 sponsors have come off the register, but that double counts a whole slew that have gone back on (London Met is just one example) but also a much larger number of perfectly good places that have come off the register on their own volition. As well as many language schools that will have opted for shorter courses that students can access with a student vistor visa, there are a number of prep schools, secondary schools and colleges. Ministers allow the impression to form that the 800 were all bogus colleges with fake students. Clearly there were some places that we should all be grateful have been closed down - we read that some 'independent' universities want to dissociate themselves from the 'dross' - but the whole sector should own the efforts to drive out fraudulent colleges, whether they are immigration scams or not.