To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made in implementing the objectives of the International Education Strategy to increase the (a) value of education exports and (b) number of international higher education students studying in the UK.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to (a) promote and (b) protect education exports.

The International Education Strategy (IES) is a UK wide strategy which commits to growing the value of education exports. An update to the department’s IES was published on 26 May 2023. This is the third annual progress update to the original 2019 IES. A link to the 2023 update can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-education-strategy-2023-update.

The UK has met the IES international student ambition of 600 thousand per year by 2030 for two years running in both 2020/21 and 2021/22. The department is on track and will continue working towards the IES education export ambition of £35 billion per year by 2030 with £27.9 billion revenue in 2021. Data used to track progress against these two ambitions is published annually.

As the International Education Champion, Professor Sir Steve Smith continues to promote UK education export growth and supports ministers to engage in strategic discussions on progress on implementing the strategy with the education sector.