My Lords, the Government welcome international students, who make a valuable contribution to the UK economically and culturally. They bring greater diversity to university and college campuses and an international dimension to the experience of all students. They also stimulate demand for courses and add to the UK’s impressive research capacity. In the longer term, they offer the prospect of productive business, political, cultural and research links. Of course, they also bring welcome income to UK universities and our wider economy.
We are pleased that the UK remains a highly attractive destination for international students. UK higher education institutions hosted almost 460,000 EU and non-EU students in 2017-18, the highest number on record. There remains no limit on the number of students who can study here, and there are no plans to introduce one.
In the Higher Education and Research Act, there is provision for a faster and simpler route for high-quality new providers to enter the sector and gain degree-awarding powers. This allows the sector to diversify and strengthen its international offer, providing even better opportunities to students from all over the world.
The Department for Education currently publishes data on the value of UK education exports annually. These statistics cover education exports and transnational activity relating to higher education, further education, schools, English language training and products and services. I am grateful for the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. It is important to look at the statistics, and I will start by giving a view of the ones that we already publish. The latest education exports data publication was dated January 2019. It set out that total education exports and transnational education activity were estimated to be worth almost £20 billion in 2016. International students at higher education institutions contributed £11.9 billion in exports through living expenditure and tuition fees alone that year. This accounts for around 60% of the total value of education exports and activity.
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The fee income data is compiled by the Higher Education Statistics Agency—HESA—which noble Lords will have heard of, and cover finance data records. Living expenditure for EU and non-EU domiciled students is estimated using the Student income and expenditure survey. The statistics are new and are in an experimental data stage in a classification of official statistics. This is because the data and underpinning methodology come from various sources with differing degrees of quality and maturity. For example, there is good data on the fee income generated by the number of international students studying at our universities, but there is no systematic collection of revenue from
transnational education activity. This must be derived through a variety of estimation techniques. Similarly, not all elements of international education expenditure are available on a regional basis. The data proposed through this amendment is therefore either already used as part of the export data that we publish or is unavailable, in which case we cannot legislate to make it so. But we share the desire for better data on education exports to support our ambitions in this area.
As announced by the Chancellor in a Written Ministerial Statement today, the new international education strategy will be published in due course. It will set out the Government’s ambitions for growing the UK’s education exports. This will include making sure that we optimise our position in the market for promoting a competitive and welcoming offer for international students. So the important statistic is extremely important. With that explanation, I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.