Overseas Students
(asked on 7th June 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many international students are currently in higher education in the UK; and whether it remains their ambition to increase the number of international students entering higher education in the UK to 600,000 per year by 2030.
Answered by
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) publishes data annually on the number of international students at UK higher education providers; they are available here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/where-from.
The table below shows the number of international student (non-UK domiciled) enrolments at UK higher education providers between the academic years 2015/16 and 2019/20, the latest year for which there is available data.
HE student enrolments of non-UK domicile students
Academic years 2015/16 to 2019/20
UK HE providers
Academic year | Non-UK domicile enrolments |
2015/16 | 443,320 |
2016/17 | 450,835 |
2017/18 | 469,205 |
2018/19 | 496,315 |
2019/20 | 556,625 |
The table above is available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb258/figure-9.
The most recent update to the International Education Strategy, published in February 2021, reaffirms the government’s commitment to increase the value of our education exports to £35 billion per year, and sustainably to increase the number of international higher education students hosted in the UK to 600,000 per year, both by 2030.