Nicholas Soames: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office how many non-EU students (a) came to the UK and (b) departed the UK in the last period for which figures are available. [191830]

Mr Hurd, Minister for Civil Society: The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Caron Walker dated March 2014:

On behalf of the Director General for the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to respond to your Parliamentary Question to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many non-EU students (a) came to the UK and (b) departed the UK in the last period for which figures are available. [191830]

The latest available provisional estimates published by ONS are for the year ending September 2013 and are based on the United Nations definition of a long-term international migrant, that is, someone who changes their country of usual residence for a period of at least one year. In addition to the ONS estimates, the Home Office have published counts of study-related visas issued to non-EEA citizens in 2013.

a) How many non-EU students came to the UK?

The latest provisional estimates from the International Passenger Survey (IPS) show that 124,000 non-EU citizens arrived in the UK for formal study in the year ending September 2013, with a margin of error of +/- 14,000. The margin of error refers to the 95 per cent confidence interval and is a measure of the uncertainty associated with making inferences from a sample.

HO visa and admissions data provide a more complete count for non-EEA students coming to the UK. The latest Home Office data show that there were 218,773 study-related visas issued to non-EEA nationals (including dependants, excluding student visitors) in 2013. Please note that Home Office student visa data will include some short-term migrants, who stay in the UK for less than 12 months.

b) How many non-EU students departed the UK?

Latest provisional IPS estimates show that 49,000 non-EU citizens, whose previous main reason for immigrating to the UK was formal study, emigrated from the UK in the year ending September 2013. This estimate has a margin of error of +/- 5,000. It should be noted that a person's main reason for migration may not be their only reason for migration. A note has been published to provide guidance on interpreting previous main reason for migration estimates, particularly within the context of student migration:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/populatio...

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