International education has always occurred via a breadth of goods, services and business models. In view of this variety, conventional statistical approaches may struggle to quantify the value of UK education exports or provide a satisfactory level of granularity across certain subsectors.
A wealth of scholarship has attempted to fill this research gap and a series of publications by the DfE provide the most comprehensive figures to date.
This project, funded by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), has conducted a critical review of the existing methodology. Market trends, international best practices and qualitative interview findings have been synthesized to offer several updates for consideration.