Scotland has a strong global reputation for higher education and research and we need to work together to ensure this continues. International students bring fresh ideas and new perspectives and in doing so help challenge thinking, making for an enriching learning environment for all students, including those from the UK. For our young people, this cultural exchange helps build life-long friendships, as well as laying the foundation for future networks, and important business, political and diplomatic bridges. International students also help stimulate demand for courses, add to the UK’s impressive research capacity and have the potential to contribute invaluably to the UK skills base—particularly in key subjects where they benefit the UK economy by filling a number of sectoral skills shortages, for example engineering, technology, health and social work. In February 2021, the UK Government published an update to the International Education Strategy, recommitting to the ambitions of the original strategy. These ambitions are to sustainably increase international students in the UK to 600,000 per year, and increase the value of education exports to £35 billion per year, both by 2030. This update set out a number of new actions aimed at supporting the sector’s path from pandemic recovery, back to sustainable growth. We are making good progress against the ambitions. International enrolments increased by 9% in the 2020 to 2021 academic year, with a total of 605,130 compared with 556,625 for the previous academic year. With this we have now met the Government’s ambition for the first time of hosting at least 600,000 international students per year by 2030. A world-class student experience is essential to the UK’s globally competitive offer.