Many students coming to the UK find they want to gain some practical work experience while they are here. Sometimes this is a few hours, sometimes an organsied internship and sometimes a paid work experience. There are now a number of ways it is possible to gain a practical work experience (paid or unpaid) and to do this legally but you do need to know the regulations.
Before we look at that though, lets think about why it is such a good idea to combine a course of study with a practical work placement. For many years universities in the UK have run courses which have a sandwich year – typically these have tended to be business courses, modern language courses and a range of vocational training courses. The opportunities students have to put what they learned into practice is invaluable. Consider especially modern language degrees – students will typically spend 3 years at university in the UK and then 1 year abroad actually practising and improving their language skills; of course while they are abroad they are working and using the language. This is exactly what our international students coming to the UK want.
UIC is a founder member of Work Experience UK and has been instrumental in working with other schools, with Edexcel (the UKs largest examination body) and within UKBA immigration rules to develop courses which include a work experience. The UKBA regulations on working here are quite simple. You have to be doing a course which leads to a recognised qualification (at level 3 on the National Qualifications Framework), any work placement can be paid but cannot be more than 50% of the length of the course and the work placement must be an assessed part of the course. It is not possible for an English language course to meet these rules but UIC’s new Workskills course is fine.
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