Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of numbers of international students attending lower-ranking universities on the quality of higher education provision.

The department wants to make sure that all students, regardless of their background, benefit from high quality, world-leading higher education (HE) that leads to excellent outcomes.

The Office for Students (OfS) monitors the outcomes achieved by students at HE providers, including international students with minimum expectations set for rates of course continuation and completion. This monitoring will consider the way in which courses meet its expectations for quality for all students who providers choose to recruit.

Where the OfS discovers providers failing to meet its expectations for quality, it can impose sanctions, including financial penalties and, in extreme cases, removing providers from its register.