Data from the sector revealed a 4.8% year-on-year drop in student numbers in 2025, along with a 10.9% fall in trainee weeks, delegates at English UK’s members’ conference recently heard.
Nevertheless, the juniors market remains relatively buoyant, making up around 60% of ELT trainees, according to BONARD data presented by the company’s worldwide education director, Ivana Bartosik.
Key sending countries in 2025 included Türkiye, Italy and Gulf nations such as the UAE. Nevertheless, Bartosik kept in mind that the market faced numerous geopolitical headwinds, such as source markets dealing with economic recessions– which she stated 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 actually resulted in “less trainee 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 essential sending countries for language knowing.
The challenges that the [language finding out] centres in London are facing are really various to the obstacles we deal with in Cardiff, or comparable cities like Manchester or Liverpool
Shoko Doherty, English UK and Celtic English Academy
Shoko Doherty, English UK chair and Celtic English Academy CEO, kept in mind that it was essential for language schools to keep close ties with agents throughout this time of unpredictability to ask them what details students need to help them decide.
“Different markets are reacting in a different way,” said Doherty, adding that “the obstacles that the [language discovering] centres in London are facing are very various to the challenges we deal with in Cardiff, or similar 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 global education method.
Her remarks can be found in the wake of English UK’s updated variation of its 2026 position paper, which prompted the UK federal government to accelerate reforms affecting the ELT sector.
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