During his visit to Japan for a meeting of G7 Foreign Ministers in November, the Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly MP, signed a new UK-Japan Memorandum of Cooperation on People-to-People Exchanges with his Japanese counterpart.

An immediate outcome of this is that the Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS) will now allow 6,000 young people in Japan, aged 18-30 years, to live, study and work in the UK for up to two years, up from 1,500 previously. Similarly, the number of British nationals who can live, study and work for one year in Japan under the Working Holiday Programme, has also been increased to 6,000.

In addition, the UK and Japan will also make efforts to promote dialogue between their higher education systems, encouraging even greater academic cooperation and mobility between the students, early career researchers and academics of each country and inter university exchange programs.

The Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC), signed on 7 November 2023 in Tokyo, celebrates, codifies and strengthens people-to-people exchanges between both countries. It fulfils an important commitment in the ‘Hiroshima Accord: An Enhanced UK-Japan Global Strategic Partnership’ agreed by Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak and Fumio Kishida in May 2023. The memorandum also affirms the support of both governments for the British Council’s portfolio of contracts and projects, mentioning the British Council’s work to “help young people from both countries acquire skills and mutual understanding”, as well as promote language education and evaluation as well as cultural exchange”.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-japan-memorandum-of-cooper....

What this means for the UK sector

This development is welcome news for the UK sector, with the UK ELT sector anticipating a significant increase in financial contribution from students from Japan. The UK higher education sector will also benefit as the Youth Mobility Scheme will allow an additional 4,500 Japanese youth per year to spend time in the UK on short courses and work experience programmes, giving them a foretaste of what student life is like when studying on longer term courses, such as a degree programme, in the UK.

Given the tendency of Japanese students (both at school and university levels) to opt for short English language courses as their first study abroad experience before committing to a degree or master’s programme, the expansion of YMS, which has been repeatedly oversubscribed, points to a potential increase in the number of Japanese students enrolled at UK HEIs in the near to medium term. We would recommend UK universities to work closely with school and career counsellors, as well as agents in Japan to promote the YMS and ELT opportunities as part of their marketing and recruitment activities.