中国小学生可申请赴澳洲留学

中国小学生可申请赴澳洲留学 ZJN: Starting in July, Chinese pupils from the age of six can apply for student visas to study in Australia. This is according to Australia’s new student visa policy. LK: So first up, the new visa policy applies to all international applicants, but analysts are saying that a major target of the six-year-old visa policy is at Chinese students and parents. What’s your take? HD: I would say this is highly likely, because when you look at student enrollment in Australia by source country over recent years, China definitely, by far, is number one. But when you look at the make-up, higher education comes at the very top, followed by language courses and vocational courses and down below are schools; junior high and senior high schools and also elementary schools. So when you look at it, the schools account for about five to six percent, so there’s definitely a good reason for Australia to target the Chinese students and parents for this. When we look at Australia’s policy on this, we see that they opened applications to international students to Australia, or shall we say to Australia’s junior high, in 2014, that’s two years ago. So actually we are seeing this policy very much in line with that, so two years later the elementary schools have also been opened, and we have to recognize that education is a very important sector in Australia; it’s a very important part of its services export. Back in 2000, education accounted for just 6 percent of its services exports, and for 2013 for example, up until 2016, the proportion is more like 28%, so definitely there’s a good reason for Australia to introduce more policies to attract more students, including six year olds. LK: The Chinese website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia Plus, reported that in a reply to the website, Australian immigration officials said that when reviewing the application from young pupils, officials may consider whether the student will be able to return to his or her home country to continue further study after primary education, so it is highly impossible for anyone to seek continued education from primary school to high school in Australia. Why are there such restrictions? HD: Actually, we’re not quite sure about these restrictions yet, because technically as I said just now in 2014 Australia opened applications by international students to its junior high schools, so technically that’s possible. But I have to emphasize here that we’re dealing with two sectors in Australia; one is education, the other immigration, and this is why in this policy we see GTE or Genuine Temporary Entrance, so the immigration officers will look at your intentions and all the factors that will push you to come back to China after this education, so these are actually two very different areas.