New English UK statistics: benchmarking world ELT recovery 

A unique snapshot of the industry's recovery in major English language teaching (ELT) destinations has been published by English UK and our insight partners, BONARD.  

The global ELT overview shows the industry's first overall upturn since the pre-Covid year of 2019 and that recovery is so far stronger in some destinations than others.  

'This is another piece in the benchmarking jigsaw we provide to our members, together with our annual Student Statistics report and the quarterly QUIC scheme. We strive to bring them world-leading information to help them make the most of opportunities to recover,' said Jodie Gray, chief executive of English UK.  

Uneven ELT recovery 

The research, The UK in the Global Context, shows how uneven recovery was in 2022 in the eight major English-speaking destinations offering ELT. Ireland almost matched its 2019 student week volume. Malta surpassed theirs by 4% while New Zealand's performance had barely changed from 2021.  

The UK attracted the largest number of students for English studies, and had the second-highest number of student weeks, 19% of the total.  

There was a 63% recovery in global student weeks and 55% in student numbers, with 765,770 students taking courses of an overall 6.4m student weeks. The report says "significant shifts were observed in the global ranking of individual study locations. Australia took the lead, with the highest number of student weeks and ranked fifth in terms of number of students welcomed in 2022." Students in Australia also spent the longest on their courses – 16.7 weeks.