Last year, foreign students attending English language courses at local licensed English Language Teaching (ELT) schools numbered 87,190, equivalent to an increase of 13.6 per cent over 2016, the NSO said today.

The majority of students attending English language courses in Malta came from Italy (29.4 per cent), Germany (11.8 per cent) and France (10.5 per cent). Together these accounted for more than half of total students. The largest share of language students were aged 15 years or less, making up 32.2 per cent of total students.

Students aged 50 and over were in the minority and numbered 5,741. Female students outnumbered males in all age categories, and accounted for 59.7 per cent of the entire student population under review. July was the busiest month for local licensed ELT schools with 21,567 arrivals, or 24.7 per cent of the annual total. This was followed by August and March with 10.8 and 10.0 per cent of total arrivals respectively.

The most popular course offered by local licensed ELT schools is General English. A total of 62,317 students - 71.5 per cent - studying during 2017 opted for this course. This was followed by the Intensive English course, with 16.5 per cent of total students. The share of foreign students attending English language courses in 2017 when compared to total inbound tourists for the same year, stood at 3.8 per cent.

Of this share, 3.0 per cent were males and 4.7 per cent were females. Foreign students enrolled in local licensed ELT schools spent a total of 244,202 weeks in Malta. The average length of stay during the year under review stood at 2.8 weeks, down by 0.2 weeks when compared to 2016.

With an average of 12.2 weeks, students from Colombia recorded the highest average duration. These were followed by South Korean and Turkish students with an average duration of 9.3 and 7.2 weeks respectively. In 2017, teaching staff in local licensed ELT schools amounted to 1,225. The largest share of teaching staff (37.6 per cent) was aged between 18 and 24. Female teachers accounted for 71.4 per cent of the total teaching staff. Non-teaching staff amounted to 759, of which 56.3 per cent were employed on a full-time basis.