The number of international students arriving in Australia for the beginning of the academic year in January rose to just under 60,000, an increase of 111 per cent year on year, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal.
Enrolments still remain below prepandemic levels, however. Overall January’s numbers are 34.4 per cent lower than those recorded in 2019, according to educational news website, erudera.com.
The fastest growth has been in the ELICOS centres, as the English Language sector is known, which has seen enrolments up from just 440 in January last year to 4,250 an increase of 865 per cent. According to Brett Blacker, CEO of English Australia, visa applications are now exceeding pre-Covid levels with nearly 56,500 applications lodged, over nine times the number recorded in 2021.
Elicos courses provide a critical pipeline of future enrolments for the University and Vocational Training Sectors in the country, so this is good news for the Australian International Education industry which prior to Covid contributed Aus$60 billion to the economy and supported an estimated 250,000 jobs
