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APPENDIX G: RAS TARGET GROUPS

Students

Scotland has had a history of attracting international students, with Edinburgh and St Andrews University being key highlights of the student offer. In 2002/03, there were over 16,000 non- EU international students in Scotland, from over 156 countries. Table F.1. below outlines the countries of origin of these students.

Table F.1. HE Students in Scotland, Country of Domicile

Source:HESA Student Record 2002-03
Notes: Numbers rounded to nearest 5

The table highlights that the majority of students come from four countries, namely, the US, China, Malaysia and India. After England, Scotland attracts the most international students; however this is a small amount of the total. There are 137,000 non- EU students in the UK in the period, indicating that Scotland attracts around 8.5% of the total non- EU student UK market, of which over 14,500 are from the US and 32,500 are Chinese students.

People seeking employment

The most reliable source of information was the number of work permits issued, which was available from Work Permits UK. The number of approved work permit applications in 2002 was 129,041. Just over one in five work permits were issued to workers of Indian nationality ²¹, with one in ten issued to United States workers.

Entrepreneurs and the self-employed

There was no readily available source of information for people seeking self-employment. An alternative representation for entrepreneurs and the self-employed information was sought from the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme ( HSMP).

HSMP was launched in January 2002 as a new initiative to allow individuals with exceptional personal skills and experience to come to the UK to seek work, take work or self-employment. No prior offer of employment was needed. Between 2002 and 2003, 4,384 HSMP applications were approved ²². India accounted for the largest number of participants on the programme, followed by the United States ²³.

Scottish businesses looking to recruit from overseas

Futureskills Scotland published details of establishments seeking to recruitment from overseas in the Skills in Scotland 2003 report. The key findings were as follows.

• In total, 114,400 workplaces had recruited staff in the last two to three years (around four-fifths of all workplaces in Scotland)
• Of those that had recruited, 78% had not recruited from outside Scotland
• 18% had recruited from outside Scotland but not actively
• 2% had recruited from outside of Scotland as the result of an active recruitment campaign (around 2,300 workplaces).

The report concludes that recruitment by employers from outside Scotland is not common, but larger establishments are more likely to recruit from outside Scotland (around 15% of establishments recruiting from overseas have more than 250 employees).

The industry sectors most likely to recruit actively from outside Scotland are hotels and restaurants and health and social work.

Expatriate Scots looking to return home

The potential pool of expatriate Scots has long been discussed by a number of bodies with an interest in policy. The most recent report, by DTZ Pieda Consulting, on behalf of Visit Scotland, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Blue Toucan, is entitled Genealogy Tourism Market Appraisal and Economic Impact. The report suggests there are around 50 million people worldwide of Scots descent, but the report also identified lower and upper estimates ranging from 28 million to 70 million.

The above figures represent the overall stock of expatriate Scots. In order to maintain consistency between the client groups, a measure was needed for the number of expatriates Scots that may consider returning to Scotland each year. There is no such information available, but in New Zealand, the number of New Zealand citizens returning home was around 22,000 per annum during the 1990's and early part of this century ²⁴. Given the lack of any available Scottish data, the estimate for New Zealand (a similarly sized country) was used for Scotland. It is reasonable to assume that a small proportion of expatriate Scots would seek to return from outside of the UK as many key countries such as the United States and Canada enjoy higher levels of income and other standard of living measures.

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