Students' English is good enough says university (From This Is Lancashire)

Students' English is good enough says university

3:28pm Thursday 5th April 2007

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Bosses at the University of Central Lancashire have hit back at suggestions by its own lecturers that some students lack basic English skills.

It comes after The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) published quotes leaked from an internal online forum set up by the university's Lancashire Business School for staff to discuss its strategic direction.

Some lecturers suggested that foreign students' lack of English was affecting the quality of teaching available to their English classmates.

One said: "This gives rise to staff teaching English as well as their subject, poor communication with students, low standards on assessed work and a plague of plagiarism."

Another lecturer said that he felt that university admissions was just a way of maintaining a certain level of income' to guarantee the lecturers' jobs in the future.

A colleague added: "Students pay a heck of a lot of money, but this shouldn't guarantee that they purchase a degree unless they also put in the matching commitment."

But the university says it was not a fair assessment of the broader discussion.

A spokesman for the university said: "The article published in last week's THES and the quotes selected from the private password protected bulletin board, do not paint a fully rounded picture of provision at UCLan, either in general, or with regard to provision for international students.

"International students who attend UCLan must have the required English language standard for admission to their courses, which is equivalent to the International English Language Testing System award.

"Students who are offered a place to study at UCLan must demonstrate that they possess the requisite English language standards, without which they would not have been able to secure a visa in their home country for study in the UK."

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