International fee levy confirmed

We now have confirmation that the planned international levy is going forward largely as expected for the 2028-29 academic year.

The concept of a levy on international fees had come a long way since it was first mooted in the immigration white paper back in May last year (with an illustrative 6 per cent of income rate), and the consultation launched alongside the budget in November 2025 set out something that felt pretty close to delivery.

It’s worth going over the details. Providers will pay a levy of £925 for every international student they have registered above an exempt floor of 220 students.

This amount is not dependent on fee level, or level or mode of study – the only exception is where the teaching is done as a part of a transnational education programme where the student in question does not study in the UK. It also doesn’t matter if the student is taught at another provider – the registering provider gets the bill.

The measures will progress via the 2026 Finance Bill – an annual tax-raising piece of legislation that goes to the Commons (only!) for ratification the week after the autumn budget. We get a draft of the clauses in question – legislation fans will note the large number of aspects that can be changed by secondary legislation laid by the Secretary of State, finance directors will be glad to note that the amounts can rise only by inflation via this route. However, ministers can also change the number of exempt students, and add new exemptions as required – something that we will be keeping a particularly close eye on given that the level of the exempt floor is not mentioned in the draft.

It will be the Office for Students that collects this tax on behalf of the Department for Education, with invoices in early February and payment due in March (synchronised with the second tranche of Student Loans Company fee income.

That payment plan, which does rather bely the idea that this levy will not affect the experiences of home students, comes as a result of sector responses to the consultation. There were 91 responses in total, which have spurred the government to set out details around some of the technical elements of the design.

As well as the bits on franchising and TNE, noted above, we get confirmation that the HESA individual learner record will be the key source of information as to student numbers – so providers will be charged once for each eligible student in a twelve month period. This decision also clarifies some other technical questions, so some edge cases like post-doctoral students, and students only studying non-credit-bearing modules – and students who spend 8 or less consecutive weeks in the UK over the year in question will be out of scope.

There will be two “trial levy calculations” run in 2026-27 and 2027-28, which will help flush out any data issues. Importantly, there will be no payments due as a result of either of these.