Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many veterinary students are currently enrolled in veterinary public health courses in the UK.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) is responsible for collecting and publishing data on the UK higher education (HE) sector. These data are shared with the department and include a wide range of information on student courses.

In the 2023/24 academic year, across all levels and modes of study, there were 12,880 student enrolments in the subject area ‘Veterinary sciences’ across all UK HE providers. The following table presents numbers of HE students by subject area and sex for each academic year from 2019/20 to 2023/24: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb271/figure-13.