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Significant Decrease in Number of UK Student Visa Applications Due to Policy Changes

by DD Staff

May 04, 2024

Students in UK

key takeaways

UK Experiences significant decline in number of student dependent applications and student visa applications in the first quarter of 2024.
The decline is attributed to new policy changes.
From January to March, a 79.5 percent decline was registered in the number of UK student visa applications.

Because of new laws that were implemented at the start of the year, there has been a decrease in the number of applications for student visas and applications from dependents who are students in the United Kingdom during the first three months of this year.

According to data from the UK Home Office, the number of student visa applications filed in the first quarter of this year was 6,700, a 79.5 percent decrease from the 32,000 applications filed in the same time of 2023.

In order to reduce the number of migrants to Britain, authorities in the UK have applied new measures since January this year. Among the changes was preventing most international students from bringing along their family members except for those on research courses.

The Home Secretary, James Cleverly, said that the UK is committed to attracting the brightest and the best to this territory.

A total of 135,788 visas were granted by authorities in the United Kingdom last year to the dependents of foreign students, thus marking an increase of over 700 percent compared to 2019 statistics. The surge in the number of visas was described as unexpected by the Home Secretary.

UK Set to Meet International Education Strategy Commitments

Previously, the Home Secretary James Cleverly said that the government was committed to meeting its International Education Strategy.

The Strategy was introduced first in 2019 in a bid to attract a total of 600,000 foreign students by 2030. In 2021/22 there were a total of 679,970 international students registered at the UK’s higher education institutions, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

A report from agency group IDP Education revealed previously that the UK, Australia and Canada are attracting fewer international higher education students compared to the United States.

The decline was mainly attributed to the changes made by these territories to their policies.

IDP Connect Chief Executive Officer, Simon Emmett, said that the latest results reflected the impact of the recent policy changes applied, stressing that governments in the UK, Australia and Canada are required to provide clarity on international student policies to carry on the competitive advantage they have in this global industry.