25 March 2014 at 9:00 am
Full house fairs
Live video blog feeds from Brazilians studying in New Zealand to the heart of an education fair in Sao Paulo, record-breaking registrations and a Ministerial opening of the Jakarta fair are just some of te highlights of the first round of fairs for 2014.
The fairs in Santiago, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Beijing, as well as New Zealand fairs in Surabaya and Jakarta in Indonesia, were all characterised by big crowds, with lots of keen interest shown by prospective students.
The prize in the round went to Beijing, where the New Zealand exhibition was awarded ‘best pavilion’ by the organisers of the China International Education Exhibition Tour (CIEET). CIEET is acknowledged as China’s most influential international education fair ¬– the October 2013 tour attracted 443 education institutions from 32 countries, and over 40,000 visitors. Numbers were high again this year: on day one of the Beijing event, Education New Zealand staff handed out 1200 brochures.
We applied a bit of ‘Think New’ to our fair programme in Latin America this year. Innovations introduced in Chile included partnering with a reputable local education media/expo company to run a New Zealand only fair, which produced real improvements in the number and quality of student attendees. This bodes well for the coming fair in Bogota, Colombia. In Brazil we attended the FPP Edu-Expo commercial fairs in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and the New Zealand pavilion at both fairs was really popular.
Another innovation was to host a live feed from two Brazilian bloggers currently studying in Dunedin (between them this pair have an online following of several million). The sessions with Caio Komatsu and Luana Mazotti at the New Zealand stand ¬in Sao Paulo attracted a lot of attention, with the second sitting extended from 30 minutes to an hour to accommodate all the questions from students at the booth.
In Indonesia, the New Zealand Education Fair in Jakarta was opened by the Minister of Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Steven Joyce. The official launch, accompanied by a cultural performance by Te Puia, was well attended by over 20 media organisations, including national and cable television.
A new aspect of the Jakarta fair was an alumnus presentation, by a graduate of Takapuna Grammar School and Auckland University. Vikra Ijas held a large audience in thrall with a humorous presentation on ‘The seven hardest things about living in New Zealand for Indonesian students’. With a closing endorsement “Life is about choices, I made the right one” it was a high value addition to the fair programme, the organisers believe.
Student numbers were high in Jakarta and in the fair in Surabaya the day before, with lots of the attending institutions commenting on the increased numbers of high quality prospective students, and greater awareness of New Zealand as a preferred study destination.
Next up:
March closes with events in Kuching, Malaysia (where New Zealand Week festivities are keeping Kiwis in the spotlight in lots of ways), and Shanghai and Guangzhou, China. In April, the fair round kicks off in India and in the Gulf states.
