Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697803692010.pdf (Ireland)
Heather Cousins Deputy Permanent Secretary, Skills & Education Group Northern Ireland Department for the Economy Opening statement • • • • • • • • • Cross-border student mobility is clearly important both to students and to the tertiary education institutions they attend.

The Department for the Economy therefore recognises the need to support such enrolments.
Each academic year, many students from Northern Ireland avail of offers of study in further or higher education in the Republic of Ireland, with similar student traffic taking place in the opposite direction.

It has long been the case that this mutually beneficial cross-border matriculation has benefited both economies, producing a highly skilled labour market and graduates of a world class standard who remain on this island.
I would like to thank the Joint Committee for the opportunity to discuss the Committee’s report and to share with you the information that the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland publishes on this matter.
For Higher Education, figures from the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency indicate an overall decline in the total number of both part-time and full-time students from the Republic of Ireland enrolled at Northern Ireland Higher Education Institutions, from 3,515 in 2011/12 to 2,095 in 2016/17.

Since 2016/17, however, that steady decline has plateaued, albeit with minor variations year-on-year, with the most recent figures indicating 2,170 enrolled in 2020/21.
As a proportion of total enrolments at Northern Ireland’s HE institutions, the number of students from the Republic of Ireland has dropped from 6% in 2011/12 to 3% in 2020/21.

However, if we look at full-time ROI student enrolments only, while the trend is similar to the total number of ROI student enrolments, in that there was a steady decline from 1,650 in 2011/12 to 1,095 in 2017/18, 2020/21 saw the highest number of students from ROI (1,415) enrolling on full-time courses since 2012/13 (1,485).
As such, while there was previously a decline in full-time enrolments, there has been some recovery post-Brexit.

Of the 2,170 ROI students enrolled at Northern Ireland’s HE Institutions in 2020/21, more than half (1,270) were enrolled at Ulster University and almost two thirds (1,375) were female.
Regarding HE mobility in the opposite direction, data sourced from the Irish Higher Education Authority indicates that the number of NI students enrolling at higher education institutions in the Republic of Ireland has increased yearly from 1,160 in 2016/17 to 1,625 in 2020/21.

• • • • • • • One of the barriers to cross-border HE enrolments is differing admissions systems.
While NI is aligned with the rest of the UK using UCAS for admissions to our Higher Education Institutions, the Central Applications Office (CAO) manage the process in ROI.

This naturally leads to some misalignment in respect of timings of the admissions stages - an issue which was exacerbated in the past few years due to the impact of the pandemic and the delays this created in publishing results.
My Department would therefore welcome the opportunity to discuss ways of better aligning the CAO and the UCAS systems.

Regarding further education, the Committee will be aware that significant levels of students from the Republic of Ireland enrol on courses in Further Education Colleges in Northern Ireland, and the flow of students from Ireland to Northern Ireland to study in FE colleges is disproportionate relative to student flows in the other direction.
Post-Brexit, due to the Common Travel Area arrangements, students from Ireland continue to be eligible to access FE on terms no less favourable than was previously the case.

There has however been a significant decline in student numbers from the Republic of Ireland in recent years.

In 2015/16 (the year prior to Brexit), 2,207 students at the Northern Ireland FE colleges were from the Republic of Ireland, representing 2.7% of the entire NI FE student population.
In 2021/22, this number dropped to 1,197 students, representing 1.9% of the NI FE student population.

As has always been the case, the vast majority of these students (68%) attend North West Regional College.

It is unfortunate that there is a lack of available data on NI students enrolled in FE Colleges in ROI – this is something that my Departmental colleagues would be keen to resolve.
I welcome the opportunity to engage with you to identify the reasons for the decline in enrolments, identify any further barriers that might be the cause, and look at steps that could be taken to support cross-border flows in both the further and higher education sectors.

I hope it goes without saying that any recommendations for policy change in Northern Ireland may be impacted by the current lack of an Executive and would be subject to the views of any incoming Minister.