The UK government has said it recognises the need to “avoid complacency” when it comes to the country’s international education strategy, as competing markets reopen their borders.
In its latest progress update, jointly published on May 25 by the Department for International Trade and the Department for Education, the government says it has made “positive progress” against its two key ambitions.
The first of these, set out in the original strategy launched in 2019, was a target of 600,000 international higher education students in the UK – the country reached this in the 2020-21 academic year, 10 years ahead of the goal date.
The second was to increase education exports to £35 billion per year by 2030. In 2019 (the latest data available) this was worth an estimated £25bn, an 8% increase since 2018.
