Detailed study of international students' 'social and economic impact' to begin

The work, which will be carried out by the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), will look at the impact of both EU and non-EU students on the national, regional and local economy, and on the education sector. It will examine the contributions made by international students through tuition fees and other spending, as well as the impact their recruitment has on the quality of education provided to domestic students.

The announcement comes as the government faces continued pressure to review the inclusion of international students in its official measure of net migration, and with questions around universities' continued access to EU staff, students and research funding following Brexit. Net migration to the UK fell to 246,000, the lowest level for three years, in the year to March 2017, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Home secretary Amber Rudd said that the government was "committed" to encouraging international students to study in the UK, while at the same time preventing abuse of the system.

"There is no limit to the number of genuine international students who can come to the UK to study and the fact that we remain the second most popular global destination for those seeking higher education is something to be proud of," she said.

"We understand how important students from around the world are to our higher education sector, which is a key export for our country, and that's why we want to have a robust and independent evidence base of their value and the impact they have," she said.

The MAC is a group of internationally-recognised experts, set up by the government to provide independent advice on migration issues. It is due to report back by September 2018.

The UK is the second most popular destination for international students, although the number of applications from countries including India and Pakistan has fallen in recent years. This drop coincided with the beginning of the government's campaign to reduce net migration, which it calculates by subtracting the number of people leaving the UK to live or work abroad from those arriving to live or work in the UK for longer than 12 months, to a target of "tens of thousands".

The government has also stepped up its campaign against the abuse of student visas as a backdoor route into the country for those seeking work in the UK. Since 2010, it has limited the ability of more than 900 colleges to bring in international students, many of which it described as being "bogus or low quality". However, newly published data produced by the ONS following the re-introduction of 'exit checks' on those leaving the UK found no evidence of non-EU students routinely overstaying their entitlement.

The decrease in the net migration figure, described as "statistically significant" by the ONS, was driven by an increase in the number of EU citizens leaving the UK over the year to March 2017, particularly those from the so-called 'EU8' eastern European countries, according to the ONS. The number of those immigrating to the UK also decreased across all the groups tracked by the national statisticians, both EU and non-EU.

"These results are similar to 2016 estimates ... and indicate that the EU referendum result may be influencing people's decision to migrate into and out of the UK, particularly EU and EU8 citizens," said Nicola White, head of international migration statistics at the ONS. "It is too early to tell if this is an indication of a long-term trend."