The government’s new student exchange programme missed its schools target by more than 40% in its inaugural year as Covid impacted take-up, an evaluation has shown.
Around 2,800 schoolchildren went on school trips under the £110 million Turing scheme in 2021, according to a government report published today. The programme replaced the EU’s Erasmus initiative in 2021.
Five thousand schoolchildren were expected to take part, with ministers originally wanting to help 35,000 people to study overseas through the post-Brexit scheme, named after scientist Alan Turing.
The figure was expected to include 5,000 schoolchildren.
But the report, penned by IFF Research, said only 20,822 took part in 2021. Just under 14 per cent (2,828) came from UK secondaries.
