ELICOS Market Snapshot:
- ELICOS commencements up by 67% or 50,068 in 2023 vs 2022
- ELICOS commencements up by 5,627 in 2023 vs pre-COVID levels of 2019
- ELICOS Only visa grants in December 2023 dropped by 68% vs December 2022
- Commencements for 2023 were up by 67.3% versus 2022 and enrolments were up by 103.6%.
- Commencements from Colombia increased by 138.1% or 16,140 additional students.
- Commencements from China increased by 57.1% or 5,550 additional students versus 2022.
- Commencements from Brazil increased by 128.3% or 16,232 additional students.
- ELICOS Only visa grants in the month of December in 2023 fell by 68% vs December 2022.
- Comparing pre-COVID and post-COVID commencements shows 5,627 more students starting ELICOS study in 2023 compared to 2019.
Pre and post-Covid Commencements & Enrolments
Comparing pre and post-COVID shows that the ELICOS Only sector has grown in volume, with commencements up by 5,627 in the first full, ‘normal’ post-COVID calendar year. At the state/territory level, QLD has seen a significant shift post-COVID, with new campuses and growth on the Gold Coast bringing an additional 4,303 commencements in 2023 compared to 2019. WA has also seen strong post-COVID growth as has SA. Meanwhile, NSW has not returned to 2019 levels, still down nearly 1,000 commencements in 2023. ACT/NT/TAS is also still down by 635 commencements versus pre-COVID figures.
Visa trends:
Grants:
Across all sectors, Student Visa grants in 2023 were up by 7.4% or just over 29,000 additional grants compared with 2022. However, with the month of December 2023 seeing grants drop by a dramatic 68% vs December 2022, 2023 did not end well for any part of the sector.
ELICOS Only applicants also saw the trend of previous months in H2 continue with grants in December 2023 down by 54% or 2,430 fewer grants compared with December 2022. In fact, December 2023 represented the weakest number of grants since the initial period of slow visa processing during the COVID recovery in early 2022. Offshore grants for Independent ELICOS were down by 43.81% in December 2023, with 1,249 fewer grants, compared to December 2022. Onshore grants for Independent ELICOS were down by 71.75%, with 1,181 fewer grants.
Lodgements
ELICOS Only student visa applications in 2023 totalled 61,231 applications which is 8.4% up on 2022. This part of the ELICOS sector represented 11.3% of all student visa applications lodged in 2023.
The applications for ELICOS Only courses month-by-month shows that the flood of interest in ELICOS courses when Australia’s borders reopened at the end of 2021 remained high until June of 2023 when it began to come back down. It also shows that the applications from onshore gradually increased through 2023, peaking in December.
DoE Summary Report
DoE Detailed Report
