7 September 2023

What can we learn from our latest quarterly statistics?

Our quarterly statistics scheme has become even more vital for UK ELT managers as business recovers from the Covid pandemic.

Overall student weeks up to 81% of 2019 volumes

We published our QUIC Q2 executive summary last week*, with headline figures including a doubling of junior student weeks over the same quarter in 2022, overall student weeks up to 81% of 2019 volumes and a rebounding of group bookings to higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Half of our source markets performed more strongly than in 2019

Roz McGill, English UK's project manager responsible for the scheme, says over half of our source markets performed more strongly than in 2019, with almost all doing better this year than last.

'The recovery is now more evenly spread between centres than in previous quarters when a handful of centres were responsible for between 30% to 38% of all business volume reported by QUIC members. In Q2 of 2023 it was more like a quarter of business being done by the top 10 centres so it looks as though recovery is much more widely distributed now.

'There is more positive news from Latin America which has again performed very strongly – many markets there are stronger than they were pre-pandemic.

'Some aspects of business are also returning to how they were before Covid. The ratio of direct to agent-booked courses, of the adult to junior market, and of groups to individuals were much the same as in Q2 2019.'

Europe returns as dominant region

In other positive news Europe, traditionally the biggest regional market for UK ELT, is now a dominant region again although, Roz says, absolute volume has not yet recovered to pre-covid levels.

Additionally, the EU junior market began to improve in Q2, "but this is never the strongest quarter for this group of students. We will get a clearer idea of trends when we see the QUIC figures for Q3 – they're going to be the interesting ones."

*The full report and accompanying Excel pivot tables are exclusive to members of QUIC, the quarterly intelligence cohort.

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