The number of overseas school students in Australia has soared by more than two-thirds in just two years during a housing crisis.
Since 2022, the number of full-fee paying foreign students at Australian schools has climbed by 68.6 per cent.
Last year alone, the number of overseas secondary students soared by 23.4 per cent to a five-year high of 26,068.
Foreign school student numbers have climbed by 10,607 since hitting a low of 15,461 in 2022 after Australia reopened its borders.
The surge in high school students is occurring on top of an influx of overseas university students and skilled migrants.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week admitted immigration levels were high because Australia was letting in too many students.
‘Immigration, particularly when it comes to housing, … the biggest thing that you could do, area where you could reduce the amount is in students, because some of that, frankly, was being abused,’ he said.
Labor had promised to cut immigration but the Coalition last year blocked its move to cap international student numbers at 270,000 for 2025.
The number of overseas school students in Australia has soared by more than two-thirds in just two years during a housing crisis (pictured is Cranbrook School in Sydney which accepts overseas students)
Mr Albanese blamed Opposition Leader Peter Dutton for blocking the government’s moved to reduce overseas university and higher education enrolments.
‘We tried to do that through legislation. Peter Dutton opposed that so it wouldn’t go through. It didn’t go through the Senate,’ he said.
Overall immigration levels last year eased to 444,480, down from the record-high levels approaching 550,000 in late 2023, based on the combined permanent and long-term intake.
The permanent segment is capped at 185,000 – covering skilled migrants and family reunions – leaving international students as the main, long-term component.
Australia’s capital city rental vacancy rates is still ultra tight at 1 per cent, SQM Research data showed.
In Hobart, it’s even tighter at 0.3 per cent.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics schools data, released on Friday, also showed Tasmania having the biggest 39.9 per cent increase in overseas school students, equating to 93 more enrolments in 2024.
Victoria saw a 27.5 per cent increase or 2,024 new foreign secondary school students.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week admitted immigration levels were high because Australia was letting in too many students
Australia’s rapid population increase was raised on the ABC’s Q+A program with viewer Biko Konstantinos asking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese why immigration was so high.
‘Why is Australia continuing to maintain record high immigration levels during the worst housing crisis in the nation’s history?’ he asked
‘Hardworking Australians are being pushed into homelessness.’
But Mr Albanese argued Australia’s immigration levels were always going to spike following the reopening of the borders in late 2021.
‘When the borders were lifted, there was always going to be a spike – Australians coming home, visitors coming here for the first time, students,’ he said.
He said those who put off studying during Covid were now coming to Australia.
‘They would begin in a four-year degree coming one year, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, they all came at once, who’d been doing their courses online as well,’ Mr Albanese said.
‘So there was always going to be a spike. And indeed, the population figures now are lower than what was projected to be the case in 2019.’
Education is Australia’s biggest services export and the fourth biggest after iron ore, coal and liquefied natural gas.
