76,063 foreign students attended English Language courses at local licensed English Language Teaching (ELT) schools in 2025, marking a drop of 4,883 students when compared to 2024.
At the same time, an increase in the total number of student weeks was registered. Foreign students enrolled in local licensed ELT schools accounted for 262,255 weeks, an increase of 5,387 weeks when compared to 2024.
The information emerges from data published by the National Statistics Office (NSO).
The NSO said that the absolute majority of courses (99.7 per cent of total student weeks) were held physically while online courses accounted for only 0.3 per cent.
The average number of student weeks per student in 2025 stood at 3.4, an increase of 0.3 compared to previous year.
In terms of age groups, the largest share of language students was in the 15 and under age bracket (22,232), which accounted for 29.2 per cent of the total, followed by the 16 and 17-year-old age group (15,928), which accounted for 20.9 per cent. Students aged 50 and over saw the lowest numbers, with 7,836.
Female students outnumbered males and others, and accounted for 63.2 per cent of the entire ELT student population, the NSO said.
In terms of the busiest months, July topped the chart for local licensed ELT schools for courses attendance, accounting for 16.5 per cent of the annual total. August and March followed at 15.8 and 9.6 per cent respectively.
A drop in the number of teaching and academic staff has also been registered. In 2025, teaching and academic staff in local licensed ELT schools numbered 712, but in 2024 they numbered 743.
Non-teaching staff amounted to 664 in 2025, an increase over the 638 registered in 2024.
When comparing the number of staff in this sector to 2018, a sizeable drop is noticed in teaching staff, when at the time the sector employed 1,028 teachers. The number of non-teaching staff in 2018 stood at 721.
The 2018 figures were also a drop when compared to 2017, when the number of teachers stood at 1,225 and the number of non-teaching staff stood at 759.
This shows a 42% drop in teaching staff when comparing 2025 to 2017.
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