UK: sustained junior ELT demand despite geopolitical hurdles

Data from the sector revealed a 4.8% year-on-year drop in student numbers in 2025, alongside a 10.9% fall in student 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 company’s international education director, Ivana Bartosik.

Key sending countries in 2025 included Türkiye, Italy and Gulf countries such as the UAE. However, Bartosik noted that the market faced various geopolitical headwinds, such as source markets facing economic downturns – which she said would inevitably have an impact on student weeks and student numbers.

Tregarran Percival, director at UKLC Education Group, agreed that geopolitics was having a knock-on impact on the sector, which he said had resulted in “less student shopping around” in the market.

In particular, Bayswater Education director James Herbertson noted the effects of Donald Trump’s tariffs on the Chinese and Colombian markets – both key sending countries for language learning.

The challenges that the [language learning] centres in London are facing are very different to the challenges we face in Cardiff, or similar cities like Manchester or LiverpoolShoko Doherty, English UK and Celtic English Academy

Shoko Doherty, English UK chair and Celtic English Academy CEO, noted that it was important for language schools to keep close ties with agents during this time of uncertainty to ask them what information students need to help them make a decision.

“Different markets are reacting differently,” said Doherty, adding that “the challenges that the [language learning] centres in London are facing are very different to the challenges we face in Cardiff, or similar cities like Manchester or Liverpool”.

Earlier this month, the UK’s skills minister Jacqui Smith hailed the UK’s ELT sector as a “very important strand” of the UK’s international education strategy.

Her comments came in the wake of English UK’s updated version of its 2026 position paper, which urged the UK government to accelerate reforms affecting the ELT sector.