Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of overseas students who were studying at further and higher education facilities in the UK in 2018.

Information on the nationality of learners is not held for government funded further education courses via the Individualised Learner Record.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency collects and publishes statistics on enrolments at UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Latest statistics refer to the academic year 2017-18.

In total, there are 458,490 higher education (HE) students enrolled at UK HEIs from non-UK countries in 2017-18[1]. This can be found at:

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/where-from.

The table below shows the top 10 countries that have HE students entering UK HEIs in 2017-18 ranked by how many entrants they have at UK HEIs.

Source: Figures 10 and 11

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/where-from.

[1] Source: Figure 8