Each quarter when the Home Office’s immigration stats appear, I’m often implored to not assume that any extrapolated trend will play out.
That has been especially true when Q1 and Q2 figures appear – on the basis that it’s somehow dangerous or scaremongering to assume that YOY increases in these quarters will somehow signal huge increases in the Q3 and Q4 bulges that drive September and January intakes.
In some cases, plenty of folk just think that there surely has to be a limit – that at some point demand will level off from the new markets that UK is ploughing, or that the lack of campus or community infrastructure will just cause the sector to become “full”.
Those warnings may well be true for this latest round of stats from the Home Office, which tell us about study visa issuance for April, May and June 2023. Then again, they may not.
