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Tauranga-based group visits Korea
E-News caught up with one of the organisers of the visit, Education Tauranga’s Anne Young.
What led to the decision to visit Korea as a group of institutions?
Education Tauranga’s 2013-2017 strategy focuses strongly on collaboration between member institutions. We find that we can make more of an impact in a market as a group, and, with a diverse range of institutions participating in activities, we can demonstrate the pathways that exist within our region to cater for all levels of education.
Korean students are enrolled in the full range of education institutions in Tauranga – from primary right through to tertiary. This is one of the reasons Education Tauranga’s Korean student numbers have continued to rise in 2015, while declining in New Zealand overall. We also attribute our success in Korea to the fact that we have committed local agents, strong local government support, highly effective links with the Korean community in the Western Bay of Plenty and institutions that provide excellent education and care to all international students, including those from Korea.
In choosing Korea as our group visit destination, we were able to further capitalise on our already strong position in that market.
What are the advantages of a group visit such as this?
The main advantage of a group visit is that it’s easier to get noticed and to secure meetings than when you’re an individual institution travelling on your own. Promotional costs can be shared, too. In our case, 21 institutions were pitching in, meaning our advertising dollar went a lot further, resulting greater numbers of prospective students at our fairs and good attendance of officials at other events.
Having trip organisers taking care of all the planning, organising and bookings meant it was a much more efficient process for everybody. It also alleviated stress for some first time travellers to Korea who didn’t have to face many of the challenging ‘unknown factors’ that can pop up when organising your own recruitment trip.
What are the downsides?
I don’t think there are any particular disadvantages to marketing as a group offshore. However, there are challenges in the logistics of dealing with such a large group, such as transport arrangements and getting everyone to where they need to be on time, as well as ensuring that planned activities are of benefit to all institutions from a range of sectors.
What were the highlights?
We attracted over 400 prospective students through our fairs which was a great success for one small region of New Zealand. The students who came along were already pretty well informed about Education Tauranga’s education offerings, demonstrating that the effort that we put into advertising prior to the events hit the mark!
Several alumni families also attended the events, and it was wonderful to see them engaging with prospective students and their families and giving their perspective on what studying in our region is like.
The support of big New Zealand brands such as Zespri was also fantastic; their product promotion at our fair went down really well.
Being hosted at the New Zealand Residence by the Deputy Head of Mission to Korea and Education New Zealand was also a highlight as we were able to recognise the contribution they had made to ensuring our activities were a success.
Are there any outcomes on the horizon or promising connections made?
We’re hoping our visit will result in an increase in student numbers from Korea in 2016. The signs are promising so far, with many new students expressing an interest in coming here. Time will tell however!
We have also strengthened relationships with Tauranga’s ‘friendship city’ of Ansan, with a larger study tour group coming in 2016 than came in 2015.
What would you do differently next time?
The visit to Korea was our second regional group visit (we visited China together as a group in March this year) so we already had experience in what did and didn’t work and were able to iron out any issues prior to this trip.
Any hints and tips for together groups thinking of undertaking this sort of group visit?
I think undertaking a visit of this kind is very effective for regions or groups of institutions. My top tips for making your visit a success are as follows:
- Do your research and have a plan. Know exactly what activities you want to do and why
- Involve all participating institutions in the planning process
- Make sure you have support from local councils and your Economic Development Agency
- Enter the market with a strong brand that all participants believe in
- Make sure you have translated materials and have translators who know your product/region
- The work you do prior to arrival is just as important (if not more than) as the work you will do while in country
- Work with ENZ and local Embassy staff
- Leverage your alumni
- Follow up with the people you met with during the visit!
Smart cities and AI technology key focus for KIWI Challenge 2023
The competition is designed to inspire youth across Indonesia to be engaged in entrepreneurial activities that address societal issues.
The 2023 theme is “Reforming Indonesia’s mobility and smart cities using AI technology”.
Education New Zealand Manapou ki te Ao (ENZ) organises the competition in collaboration with a New Zealand university and Kopi Tuli (Deaf Cafe), a deaf community in Jakarta. This year, ENZ is partnering up with Auckland University of Technology (AUT) to co-host the initiative.
School groups are required to submit video entries to a judging panel made up of AUT academics and ENZ representatives. Submissions are reviewed by the panel and finalists selected. The students will then be supported through a number of workshops and mentoring by the AUT academics.
The participating academic from AUT is Senior Lecturer International Business, Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Dr Taghreed Hikmet, who has expertise in smart cities and is passionate about mentoring and inspiring young future leaders. She has had close involvement in multiple programmes like YES, where she mentored young entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas.
Dr Hikmet says she is honoured to be involved this year.
“It is a delight to have the opportunity to inspire Indonesian students to think creatively about what the future can look like. The development of smart cities is about improving sustainability, creating opportunities for economic development and enhancing the quality of life for people, I’m looking forward to seeing the ideas students put forward,” she says.
ENZ Director Asia Ben Burrowes says that this initiative showcases New Zealand’s world-class education and academics in a meaningful way.
“Now entering its fourth year, KIWI Challenge has grown into a unique platform for New Zealand and our top academics to remain connected to Indonesian students in a way that is in touch with what matters to them. We continue to work with partners in Indonesia to identify the themes that resonate with students” he says.
The winners of the competition will be announced on Saturday 25 November, the top three groups will be awarded vouchers worth IDR 2,000,000 – 10,000,000.
To date, the competition has attracted more than 1,000 Indonesian students through the programme and each year has showcased a New Zealand university and a particular theme. Previous university partners were Massey University (Tourism), Lincoln University (Agribusiness) and the University of Canterbury (Education Technology).
New approach for Korean middle schools
The Korean government wants to improve levels of student happiness, and move on from students validating their success and self-worth only in terms of academic performance. A priority is to support students to pursue “non-core learning areas” (such as music, arts, physical education, career exploration, club-oriented activities, etc). Each school will now designate a semester that is exam- and test-free to allow students to experience a wide range of these activities.
This approach represents a big change in the Korean education environment. To date these students have relied heavily on simple memorisation and rote learning instead of thinking creatively or critically. The government now expects students to freely discover their competencies and capability, free from the stress associated with exams. Korean President Park Geun-hye describes this initiative as a “key task to fundamentally change Korea’s education system”.
Under this new initiative, schools will teach students using diverse and engaging methods such as discussion, experiments, outdoor activities and team projects. Opportunities for students to engage with activities that may inform their thinking about future career options and/or future subject choices is also encouraged.
The initiative began as a pilot in September 2013 with 42 Korean middle schools (1 percent of all Korean middle schools). It was expanded in 2014 to around 800 schools (25 percent), and to 1,500 schools in 2015 (nearly 50 percent). This year, all 3,204 middle schools – and their 1.5 million students – will implement this approach.
Opportunities for NZ schools
This new way of working not only requires a significant paradigm change in thinking for educators and parents, it also requires Korea to develop new infrastructure outside the classroom. It may therefore take some time to fully develop.
This new initiative presents an opportunity for New Zealand schools; two groups of Korean parents may be interested in sending their children to study abroad during the exam-free semester:
1. Families that wish to take advantage of the New Zealand curriculum, teaching expertise and existing infrastructure in terms of these broader subject areas (especially opportunities to learn outside of the classroom that are available at New Zealand’s intermediate schools); or
2. Families that have a more traditional Korean academic education preference and wish to provide their children with an intensive learning experience (such as significantly develop their English language skills).
New Zealand schools may therefore wish to reframe their marketing collateral for parents to demonstrate the strengths of their school’s programmes to deliver quality educational outcomes for Korean middle school students during these exam-free semesters.
FAQs
What age and year level are Korean middle school students?
Students in Korea start school at age seven, rather than five, the usual age in New Zealand. Korean middle school students are in years seven and eight and aged 13-14 years. The table below compares the age and year of the two school systems.
What are the Korean school semester dates?
Korean school year is divided into two semesters, running from 1 March to mid-July, and from mid/late August to February.
Who decides which semester will be exam-free? Will it be the same semester for all schools in a region, for example?
Individual principals, in consultation with their school staff decide which semester will be selected as the ‘exam-free’ semester. This could be any semester between the first semester in the first year and the first semester of the second year.
Would this be an opportunity for students to spend the whole semester away from Korea, or are we talking about short (say 2-3 week or 4-5 week) programmes for groups?
This will likely be predominately an opportunity for individual students to study for a full semester in New Zealand.
That said, it is possible that schools with MoUs with Korean schools could promote an exchange or short course study abroad programme, but New Zealand schools who are interested in this should carefully canvas existing sister schools first to confirm whether this approach would meet the requirements.
What does experiential learning mean in Korea?
The following four types of activities have been recommended by the Korean Ministry of Education:
- Topic of interest: students choose topic(s) of interest and participate in a programme of activities around the topic, such as: entrepreneurship, design, animation, film, barista skills, smartphone app development, robotics, cooking, science etc.
- Arts and physical education: students undertake activities that are not part of their regular school curriculum such as: participating in a musical or in a band, curating, industrial design, or physical education activities such as sports leisure industry experience or exploring career options around soccer, dancing etc.
- Club activities: student clubs can be organised by students around topics of interest. These could be linked to other activities such as sports, career or volunteering such as a hospital volunteering group of 20 students who go to local hospitals to help out.
- Career: students discover what employment options await; giving a chance for them to begin thinking about the sort of work they would like to do in the future and to gather information that will help them make good decisions about the courses they will undertake when they enter secondary school. This could include going into workplaces to experience, observe etc. and could also include a career counselling component.
The New Zealand curriculum, teaching techniques and education outside of the classroom experience and infrastructure appears to be a good fit with this initiative.
Alumni news - launch the New Zealand Educated LinkedIn group
We encourage you to look at this and refer the LinkedIn group to your own alumni and ask them to join up.
This is the first stage in our work with alumni. Once there are more members in the group we will start sending out notice of events, encourage alumni to form groups and start discussion forums.
Here is a comment from one of the alumni who recently joined: “Thank you very much for invitation, this group would make me feel like return back to NZ. Keep in touch.”
New resource on the Brand Lab
"Peking University’s New Zealand Centre (which involves several of our universities and government agencies) runs this undergraduate course which students take to earn foreign language credits (and because of their interest in New Zealand, of course). Enrolments have grown year-on-year, with 75 students now taking this class.
In the past, I have delivered a more academic lecture on New Zealand’s education system, including on policies and reform. And in the past, this has been met with glazed eyes. So in a break with tradition I decided to make the session more interactive and incorporate some of the tools we now have at our disposal. I gave an informal “why study in New Zealand” presentation, then moved on to showing the New Zealand Story and New Zealand Education Story.
We then broke into small groups (just like we do in New Zealand classrooms and tutorials), and students worked on the task I had set: to discuss and agree on “what three words best exemplify what is ‘special’ about New Zealand education.”
And I was blown away by the responses. Each group came up to write its words on the blackboard, and common themes included innovation, openness, diversity, inspiring, and opportunity. Our messaging is clearly resonating.
After then watching some of ENZ’s Gibson Group-produced Dragons in a Distant Land alumni episode (and remembering far too late that I have a cameo in it), I asked each group to explain its three words. And again – I was blown away. The willingness of these students to contribute their thoughts and to ask questions – in English, in public - with a second member from one group even volunteering additional thoughts – really impressed me. The course coordinators were also very pleasantly surprised.
As products of New Zealand’s education system, volunteering our thoughts, asking questions and speaking in public come naturally to us. This isn’t so in every education system.
Almost best of all, the course was that day being audited by a very senior Peking University Professor. She stood up at the end and said, “I did my PhD in economics at the University of Chicago. After today, I want my grandchild to go and study in NZ”.
I always give the class my email address, and as of right now have received five enquiries from these students at China’s top-ranked university. I have also had to courier additional blocks of Whittaker’s chocolate. Each of the nine groups deserved a prize.
A Chinese subtitled version of the New Zealand Education Story is now available on the Brand Lab, so I encourage you to use this when next in China or hosting Chinese visitors.”
Game On, in Japan
Among the over 60 guests who attended the event, were New Zealand’s Ambassador to Japan, Mark Sinclair; Senior Adviser to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Shinichi Yamanaka; Vice President of the Japan Rugby Football Union, Masayuki Takashima; and Fonterra Japan President, Yasuhiro Saito.
Those GOE student participants who were present spoke, in English, of how fulfilling an experience it was, and of their desire to come back to New Zealand for further study.
Twelve male high school students from institutions that belong to Kanto Super League spent time in Hamilton from mid-July to early August this year, receiving high level rugby coaching care of the Waikato Rugby Union as well as undergoing an intensive English language programme at the University of Waikato Pathways College.
Ten female rugby players selected by the Japan Rugby Football Union spent time in Auckland in August, participating in a similar programme run by the Auckland Rugby Union and the New Zealand Language Centres.
Fonterra Japan sponsored the Hamilton programme while Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology provided financial support for the Auckland programme.
Both groups of students stayed with local families while in New Zealand.
GOE Rugby was launched by Prime Ministers Shinzō Abe and John Key in July 2014 in response to the Japanese government’s goal to improve the English language skills and increase the sporting capacity of Japan’s young people in the lead up to Japan’s hosting of the 2019 Rugby World Cup and 2020 Olympics.
Led by English New Zealand in partnership with the Essentially Group, GOE Rugby includes five top provincial rugby unions and selected premium English language providers based in locations throughout New Zealand.
From November, the GOR Rugby will be available to high school groups from across Japan.
For more information on the details of the programme, please contact Misa Pitt, ENZ Japan.
Reach out to students in Japan
ENZ’s Senior Market Development Manager – Japan, Misa Kitaoka, said the annual guidebook is the only Japanese publication officially supported by the Embassy in Tokyo and ENZ.
“Keibunsha publishes this study guidebook for many other English-speaking embassies and is a great opportunity for New Zealand regional bodies and education providers to promote their offering,” said Misa.
“As destination marketing plays a key part of edu-promotion in Japan, Keibunsha is offering a separate advertising rate for regional groups.”
To advertise, bookings must be made by 10 April.
For further details on the guidebook and pricing for regional groups, download the proposal here. For individual providers, download the proposal here.
Kiwi students become ambassadors in Beijing

The students represented three cohorts from Massey University and the University Canterbury. Two of the groups were based at Peking University, while the other had been studying in Hangzhou.

This marks the second year in a row that PMSA groups have come together at a function at the New Zealand Embassy in Beijing.

New Zealand Ambassador to China, Clare Fearnley, welcomed the visitors and provided an update on the China-New Zealand relationship. Other Embassy staff, representing a range of government agencies from the Ministry of Primary Industries to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade were present to talk to students about their roles and areas of interest.

ENZ Regional Director North Asia, Adele Bryant, said it provided a great opportunity to encourage the students to be ambassadors for New Zealand education during their stay in China.

“These students are ideally placed to help raise the profile of New Zealand education, as they are great examples of the kind of students we produce – independent thinkers, and creative, innovative and skilled young people.”

Massey University’s Head of the School of Humanities, Kerry Taylor, also believes in the value of the programmes to students, both now and in their future.

“The PMSA provides an opportunity for our high academic achievers to experience first-hand the dynamism and relevance of China to New Zealand,” said Kerry.

“Many will come back to do more study in China or develop business links with China that will contribute to New Zealand’s prosperity.”

A PMSA group from Massey University at the New Zealand Centre, Peking University. The Massey students studied an intensive Chinese Language programme at PKU.
Advertising opportunity in Japan
ENZ’s Senior Market Development Manager – Japan, Misa Kitaoka, said the annual guidebook is the only Japanese publication officially supported by the New Zealand Embassy in Tokyo and ENZ.
“With the Rugby World Cup held in Japan for the first time this year, New Zealand will have an increased presence and visibility in the public,” said Misa.
“This guidebook is a great opportunity for regional bodies and individual providers to promote their offering. Furthermore, because destination marketing is a key part of education promotion in Japan, KBunsha is offering a separate advertising rate for regional groups.”
To advertise, bookings must be made by 22 March 2019.
For further details on the guidebook and pricing for regional groups, download the proposal here.
For individual providers, download the proposal here.
Thirty groups awarded PM's Scholarships for Asia and Latin America
The successful groups were announced by Education Minister Chris Hipkins today, and mark the outcome of the first round of the scholarships since they were paused due to COVID-19.
Education New Zealand Manapou ki te Ao (ENZ) congratulates all the successful recipients, who include a marae, non-profit organisation TupuToa, six of New Zealand's eight universities, Te Pūkenga, and a number of private training establishments.
A full list of recipients is available here.
Chris Hipkins also announced that the scholarships will open for individual applications this month. Applications will be open from 18 July - 31 August 2022. More information, including how to apply, is available here.
About the scholarships
The Prime Minister's Scholarships for Asia and Latin America are funded by the New Zealand Government and administered by Education New Zealand Manapou ki te Ao.
Since 2013, the scholarships have supported more than 2,400 New Zealanders on learning experiences in Asia and Latin America.