BONARD Blog: QUIC Scheme – UK ELT industry returns to pre-pandemic trends

With recovery now well underway, key trends show that the industry is starting to look like its pre-pandemic self again.

Here is a brief overview of the data.

Juniors are back

Both adult and junior student weeks registered a substantial year-on-year increase.

Adult student weeks increased by 113% between Q3 2021 and Q3 2022 – from 58,340 to 124,338. But the year-on-year change in the number of junior student weeks is particularly impressive: from 2,397 to 80,413, a 3,245% jump – and a sign that demand is stabilising after the pandemic crisis.

With the return of junior students, the student body composition now looks more like it did in 2019: in Q3 2022, adult student weeks made up 61% of the total and junior students 39% – a proportion more similar to the picture in 2019 (60% to 40% split) than 2021 (96% to 4%).

Booking trends

According to the data, in Q3 2022, four in five student weeks were commissionable. Group bookings accounted for 36% of the total student weeks – a considerable increase from 13% in Q3 2021. Both these figures also signal a return to pre-pandemic trends.

Source countries

The list of the top 10 source countries also has a lot of positive stories to tell.

Most source countries show substantial year-on-year growth.

Strong source countries in Western Europe, such as Italy, Spain and France, are well on track to rebuild their pre-pandemic volume, while other countries, such as Brazil, have already exceeded it.

Only China bucks the trend: the second largest market by total student weeks in Q3 2019, it dropped to 6th place in 2022.

This edition of the QUIC Scheme gathered data from 120 English UK member centres.

The executive summary can be accessed here.

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