Numbers of fee paying overseas students and children of overseas workers attending local schools are both growing strongly

Overseas student numbers in New Zealand reached their highest level in at least 10 years during July.

The latest figures from the Ministry of Business Immigration and Employment (MBIE), which incorporates Immigration NZ, show 95,118 people in NZ on student visas in July.

That's the highest number in the MBIE dataset which goes back to 2016, and is up by 9.7% compared to July last year. It included 47,337 full fee paying students and 34,035 dependents of overseas workers.

Full fee paying students usually come to NZ to study at tertiary institutions and pay for the full cost of their education. Dependents of overseas workers are usually the children of people on work visas and are not charged for attending local schools, apart from normal school fees that NZ residents and citizens also pay.

Both groups have shown substantial growth in numbers over the last three years, although full fee paying student numbers remain below their pre-Covid pandemic highs. The student dependents of foreign workers hit a record high of 34,713 in May and then declined slightly over the following two months.

According to MBIE there were 198,288 people in NZ on work visas in July this year, up 3.4% compared to July last year and the highest number for the month of July since 2020.

That suggests there is around one dependent child attending school for every 5.8 foreign workers in the country.

The graph below shows the 10 year trend for both groups.