Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the graduate visa scheme on the achievement of the Government's objectives in the International Education Strategy.

Strengthening the UK's visa offer for international higher education students was an important element of the International Education Strategy (IES) and its objectives, particularly the ambitious target of attracting 600,000 international students. The IES update in 2021 incorporated the graduate route to reflect its importance in achieving the outlined ambitions.

With 679,970 international students in the 2021/22 academic year, the UK has met the IES international student ambition of attracting 600,000 international students 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.