Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many international students on student visas who complete postgraduate taught courses and leave the UK within 12 months do not subsequently return to the UK on that visa.

The Home Office does not publish data on the proportion of student visas for postgraduate taught courses or how long people were resident in the UK on student visas.

The Home Office publishes data on sponsored study visas in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the outcomes of student visas are published in table ‘Vis_D02’ of the detailed entry clearance visas dataset. Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relates up to the end of December 2023.

The Home Office also publishes data on how people move through the immigration system in the Migrant Journey report. The report contains information on the number of people starting a journey each year broken down by immigration route (e.g. study) and for how long they continue to hold leave. It does not contain information on how long people were resident in the UK or the level of qualification for which they were studying. The latest report covers up to the end of 2022.