Data from the sector revealed a 4.8% year-on-year drop in student numbers in 2025, alongside a 10.9% fall in trainee weeks, delegates at English UK’s members’ conference last week heard.
However, the juniors market remains relatively buoyant, making up around 60% of ELT students, according to BONARD data presented by the business’s worldwide education director, Ivana Bartosik.
Secret sending out countries in 2025 included Türkiye, Italy and Gulf countries such as the UAE. However, Bartosik noted that the marketplace dealt with various geopolitical headwinds, such as source markets facing economic declines– which she said would inevitably have an effect on trainee weeks and trainee numbers.
Tregarran Percival, director at UKLC Education Group, concurred that geopolitics was having a knock-on influence on the sector, which he said had resulted in “less student shopping around” in the market.
In particular, Bayswater Education director James Herbertson kept in mind the impacts of Donald Trump’s tariffs on the Chinese and Colombian markets– both crucial sending nations for language knowing.
The challenges that the [language discovering] centres in London are dealing with are extremely different to the challenges we deal with in Cardiff, or similar cities like Manchester or Liverpool
Shoko Doherty, English UK and Celtic English Academy
Shoko Doherty, English UK chair and Celtic English Academy CEO, noted that it was necessary for language schools to keep close ties with representatives throughout this time of uncertainty to ask them what info trainees require to help them decide.
“Various markets are reacting differently,” stated Doherty, adding that “the challenges that the [language learning] centres in London are dealing with are very different to the difficulties we face in Cardiff, or comparable cities like Manchester or Liverpool”.
Previously this month, the UK’s skills minister Jacqui Smith hailed the UK’s ELT sector as a “very crucial hair” of the UK’s international education strategy.
Her remarks was available in the wake of English UK’s upgraded variation of its 2026 position paper, which advised the UK government to speed up reforms impacting the ELT sector.
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