Asked by: Baroness Gohir (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of students in the UK who are on a student visa from Gaza and what support is being provided to them.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), now part of JISC, is responsible for collecting and publishing data about UK higher education (HE). The latest statistics refer to the 2021/22 academic year.
Table 28 of HESA’s ‘Higher Education Student Statistics: UK, 2021/22’ reports the number of non-UK domiciled HE students by country of domicile. This data is accessible at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-28.
In the 2021/22 academic year, there were 245 student enrolments at UK HE providers who were domiciled in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (formerly the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip) prior to their studies.
Universities offer a range of dedicated support to their international students before they arrive in the UK, on arrival and during their studies. This includes both pastoral care and financial support. If a student is experiencing difficulties, they should contact the university to discuss their circumstances.