The Westminster government’s newest iteration of the international education strategy commits the UK to three ambitions: to increase the UK’s international standing through education, to recruit high quality international higher education students from a diverse range of countries, and to grow education exports to £40bn a year by 2030.
Last time we got an International Education Strategy from the government was back in 2019 – famously it committed the government to increase education exports to £35bn per year, and to increase the number of international HE students studying in the UK to 600,000 per year, again: both by 2030.
The government’s current best estimate for performance against those targets – which deals with the 2022 calendar year – suggests income from education exports was £32.3bn for that year – with around three quarters of that being derived from higher education activity. For a variety of reasons, it isn’t great data.
And HESA tells us that there were 758,855 international higher education students during the 2022-23 academic year, though numbers have fallen since.
Diversification across sub-sectors
Within the higher education sector the perception has been that this decline in international student numbers has been a political choice in the face of wider public concerns around immigration rather than any failing among universities: changes to dependant visa access, a reduction in the length (from 24 months to 18 months) of the graduate visa for postgraduate taught students, reported difficulties in obtaining student visas, and the onset of price rises linked to the forthcoming international student levy.
Though a lot of the UK’s historic strengths in international education come via its higher education providers, the strategy is at pains to emphasis the full spectrum of what is on offer, noting:
We see diversification across sub-sectors as key to long-term success
Accordingly much of the strategy deals with early years and schools, non-HE tertiary education, English language training, special educational needs, and education technology. But, as with higher education, there is little detail: this will be filled in via an action plan developed by a reconstituted Education Sector Action Group (ESAG). This ministerially-chaired forum will bring together government, industry, and sector representative bodies: each representative will lead on a sub-sector action plan to be published within 100 days of appointment.
Of course, we don’t even know which minister will chair the forum yet – the strategy is owned jointly by the Department for Education, the Department of Business and Trade, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office. We do know that Steve Smith retains his role as international education champion, and that the strategy will be supported by a range of existing tools and programmes: notably for higher education these include research and technology partnerships including Horizon Europe, plus things like Erasmus+ (from 2027) and Turing (newly confirmed for 2026-27).
The British Council will play a prominent role too – most notably in the expansion of transnational education provision across every part of the sector. Here robust quality assurance will play a key part – we get detail on schools-level accreditation and oversight, but the parallel section on higher education quality assurance and international standards is missing (despite case studies on the University of London, and the India campus of the University of Southampton). The section on the work of the British Council-led Alumni UK programme (launched in 2022) offers recognition of the value of alumni as international ambassadors.
And what’s in it for higher education?
The meat of the strategy for higher education providers concerns a “strategic approach to sustainable international student recruitment”. The key words are “well-managed” and “responsible” recruitment, and a quality student experience should lead to world-class outcomes. It is very encouraging to see that support systems and infrastructure (including local housing) are on the radar too.
Institutions will be “encouraged to diversify their recruitment”, moving away from reliance on any single country”. There’s support for the sector-owned Agent Quality Framework to tackle poor practices, and a suggestion that government will:
work closely with the sector to ensure that our institutions recruit international higher education students in a way that maintains quality and student experience. This includes considering factors such as skills and entry requirements, adequate infrastructure, local housing, and support systems
A section on “maintaining a competitive offer” flags the retention of the (18 month) graduate route, the high potential individual route for those graduating from top 100 institutions (nothing to do with helping UK international education expand, but it is in there), and the change in visa conditions enabling graduates to start businesses while transferring to the “investor founder” route. The international student levy clearly does not help to maintain a competitive offer but we get details of that here too:
The levy will be fully reinvested into higher education and skills, including the reintroduction of targeted maintenance grant for disadvantaged domestic students, helping to break down barriers to opportunity as part of the government’s Plan for Change and making our higher education system more inclusive for the benefit of all students
However this ends up benefitting home students, there is no detail on how the policy might discourage (via higher prices, for example) international recruitment.
Indeed, throughout the strategy there is nothing that deals with the restrictions being placed on higher education as the largest single contributor to educational exports, and how that situation will cause problems (despite warm words about “unlocking the full potential of our education sector”) in meeting this expanded and challenging financial target.