South Korea continues to be an important market for all institutions, especially schools and language schools. It is a mature market, but one that does fluctuate a fair bit. We have prepared a summary of current student statistics.
Here is some updated information on students from the Republic of Korea (hereafter called 'Korea' for convenience) in New Zealand. Note that this data is drawn from a variety of sources, but overall you should have a good picture.
The Export Education Levy data notes that for the year 2006, 15,067 Korean students came through New Zealand. (Unfortunately we do not have comparisons for previous years from this data set).
The Statistics department note in their annual Census of Language schools that 6,026 Korean students came through language schools in NZ in the year ended March 2006 (this compares with 6,873 for 2005 and 7,845 for 2004. The year end March 2007 data is still a couple of months away). The average length of stay in ELS was 10.9 weeks (comparative data for earlier years is not available).
Looking at data supplied by the Department of Labour relating to Student Visas/Permits, we currently have a total of 7,657 Korean students with valid student visa/permits. Of these, 809 are at Universities, 271 at Polytechs/ITP's, 1,601 at Private Training Establishments and 4,073 at Schools (of which 618 are at Intermediate schools and 942 at Primary schools). The balance of 903 are not recorded by institution type - this normally tells us that they are not fee paying students but have a student visa for some other purpose eg child of a long term work permit holder or the like.
The number of new longer term students coming to New Zealand looks like it is going up at the moment. The first time student approvals for Korean fee paying students for the first 9 months of the 06/07 year (the immigration year is from 1st July to end June for data purposes) is 3,810. This compares to 3,911 for the full 05/06 year and 3,856 for the full 04/05 year (but is well below the peak of 8,755 in the 02/03 year).
Turning to the data for fee paying student approvals from Korea (this is not the same as first time students, because it counts re-approvals as visas expire and are renewed) - for the first nine months of the 06/07 year this is 949 offshore approvals and 8,228 onshore. The equivalent numbers for the first nine months of the 05/06 year are 549 and 7,319.
The overall approval rate for student applications (compared to total applications received) from Korean students is constant at around 98% for offshore applications and 99% for onshore applications – these are apparently not high risk applications! |
