Opinion… from the News Editor, 06.03.25

In the USA, international education associations are calling on the government to urgently restore funding for exchange and study abroad programmes.

Recipients of Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) funding were advised in mid-February of a 15-day pause on all payments. This was due to expire on February 27^th, but at the time of writing there has been no further comment or action from the government.

If the US administration wishes to restore funding for such programmes that is a decision for them to make, but leaving students stranded and confused in the middle of programme for which funding has already been approved and budgeted is certainly not an appropriate way of doing things. Read more about the advocacy campaign here.

We have reported previously that the government of Quebec passed legislation that will allow it to control international student numbers by various different levers.

It has now, sadly, put those powers into action by setting international application limits for the next 12 months. The levels are well below those set by the federal government for Quebec, and will amount to a decrease in students – particularly for vocational colleges and CEGEPs. As some institutions have pointed out, this runs contrary to existing government plans to increase French-speaking international student numbers in the regions of the province.

In the UK, the Home Office published full-year data for student visa grants in 2024, which showed a 14 per cent decrease compared with the previous year. The ban on master’s students bringing dependents introduced last year has clearly deterred some Indian and Nigerian students, but top source market China was also down compared with the previous year.

There were signs of recovery at the end of the year. The number of student visas issued in 2024 Q4 was slightly higher than the end of 2023.

It is also worth noting that the student visa approval rate for the UK was 94 per cent in 2024. This is significantly higher than competitors such as Australia, Canada and the USA. With uncertainty in those destinations, will agents and students favour the relative reliability of the UK visa regime this year?

Staying with the UK, ELT association English UK released its Q4 data report on 2024 for its Quarterly Intelligence Cohort (QUIC) scheme, which allowed an overview of the year as a whole.

It shows that for schools in the scheme, 2024 student weeks were down by around nine per cent compared with 2023. This supports what many agents and educators were anecdotally indicating last year, and suggest that any post-Covid pent-up demand dissipated last year.

Also in the UK, there were further closures announced in the independent school sector. In both causes, the imposition of VAT was not given as a root cause of the closures, but it certainly can’t have helped attempts to balance the books and boost recruitment of domestic and international students.

An interesting development this week came from Wycombe Abbey and UKLC , who partner on the Wycombe Abbey Summer Programme, which has become dyslexia friendly. Click here to read more.

Elsewhere this week, we had news of an expansion of boarding facilities for Taunton School and Taunton School International ; a new residential summer centre for International House Dublin ; new members in South Africa, New Zealand and the UK for Quality English ; and the acquisition of English Country Guardians by Academic Families in the UK.