Edition: 1/26  ·  Covering the fortnight to 22 August

Welcome to the KoinEd Global Education Roundup – August 2026

Edition: Saturday 22 August 2026  ·  Covering the fortnight to 22 August

Welcome to KoinEd’s new, bi-monthly global educational roundup.

Britain has now had both of its results days, and the national headline — steady at the top, fractionally softer at the pass mark — conceals the sharpest regional divide since records began. Meanwhile the English-speaking world continues to re-price the international student through levies, caps and visa friction, and in the United States that project has moved from policy into the courts: a coalition of eight organisations sued the Department of Homeland Security on 18 August, and two days later the Education Department published a 354-page rewrite of how universities are accredited at all. Elsewhere, governments have stopped debating whether to regulate phones and artificial intelligence in classrooms and started writing the rules. Underneath all of it sits a figure that has risen for seven consecutive years: 273 million children and young people out of school altogether.

Britain: two results days, and a widening map

A-levels: a record intake with a hole in the middle

Hundreds of thousands of students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland collected A-level results on Thursday 13 August, alongside AS grades, Level 3 vocational technical qualifications and, in England, T-level results. Scotland went first, with Qualifications Scotland releasing results on 4 August.

The headline was a good one. UCAS figures put the number of UK 18-year-olds accepted onto degree courses at 262,820, up three per cent on last year’s 255,130 and a record high, with a record share also securing their first-choice institution. Last summer, more than one in four UK A-level entries were graded A or A*, the highest proportion outside the pandemic years.

The awkward figure sits alongside it. Around 58,000 18-year-olds in England were projected to receive no grades at all on results day, having left education and training early. Education Secretary Lucy Powell has framed this as a NEET crisis and a symptom of a two-tier system, and has been pushing a technical and vocational answer: new V Levels sitting alongside A Levels, occupational routes opening from age 14, and fully funded apprenticeship training for under-25s. Whether that shifts the number is the question the sector will be asking through the autumn.

GCSEs: stability at the top, a record gap underneath

Across the UK, 22.0 per cent of entries were awarded grade 7/A or above, up marginally from 21.9 per cent last year, while 67.3 per cent achieved grade 4/C or above — down a tenth of a point on 2025 and the third consecutive small decline. Candidate numbers rose 1.5 per cent and entries 0.6 per cent. Set against 2019, the pattern is now essentially complete: top grades sit slightly above the pre-pandemic 20.8 per cent, and the standard pass rate is identical to that year’s 67.3 per cent. Among 16-year-olds in England specifically, 70.7 per cent of entries reached grade 4 or above, up 0.2 points, with 23.1 per cent at grade 7 or above.

The gender gap narrowed once more. Girls took 24.4 per cent of entries to grade 7/A or above against 19.6 per cent for boys — a gap of 4.8 percentage points, down from 5.1 last year. The nations remain hard to compare, running different qualifications under different regulators: Northern Ireland recorded 32.4 per cent at grade 7/A and 83.1 per cent at grade 4/C, whilst Wales posted 19.2 per cent and 62.0 per cent respectively.

The number that deserves attention is regional. London took 28.6 per cent of its entries to grade 7 or above, up 0.2 points on 2025. The North East managed 17.7 per cent. That gap of 10.9 percentage points is the widest since the data series began in 2010, up from 10.6 last year, and London has also stretched its lead over the North West, the East Midlands and the West Midlands. Below London come the South East on 24.5 per cent, the East of England on 22.1 per cent and the South West on 21 per cent. At the standard pass mark the ordering shifts: London leads on 71.7 per cent, but the West Midlands sits lowest at 62.5 per cent, behind the North West on 63.9 and Yorkshire and the Humber on 64.2.

FFT Education Datalab makes the sharpest observation about all this: London is the only English region where 2026 results are perceptibly above 2019. It also cautions against reading the gap too literally, because these figures say nothing about how many qualifications pupils in each region actually sit. In 2025, state school pupils in London entered 7.79 GCSEs on average against 6.6 in the North East — a difference that narrows but does not vanish once vocational qualifications are counted. The DfE’s provisional Key Stage 4 statistics in October will be the first release capable of settling it.

Two operational notes worth logging. JCQ published 445,349 vocational and technical qualification results alongside GCSEs, and for the first time issued dedicated Level 1 and Level 2 VTQ data — a small but meaningful step towards treating those routes as part of the national picture rather than a footnote to it. And the government’s Education Record app, trialled with 95,000 students in the West Midlands and Greater Manchester, was opened to more than 750 schools, releasing grades from 11am. The DfE has been careful to say the app is not intended to replace the paper results slip, and no take-up figures have been published, so any verdict on it is premature.

The great re-pricing of the international student

United States: the sharpest correction

NAFSA and the research firm JB International published projections this month indicating international enrolment will fall by around 9.5 per cent this autumn — roughly 111,000 fewer students at American colleges and universities. Analysis drawing on NAFSA and IIE data puts the ceiling at 112,000 students, some $3.4 billion in lost revenue and around 40,000 jobs, with 63 per cent of institutions expecting fewer overseas students.

In headcount terms, that means an expected 1,057,000 international students in 2026–27, against roughly 1,169,000 in 2025–26 and a peak of 1,178,000 in 2024–25. That peak year saw international students contribute an estimated $43 billion to the American economy and support 356,000 jobs; the 2026–27 contribution is now projected at $38.3 billion. Visa restrictions, appointment backlogs and uncertainty around Optional Practical Training are the drivers most often cited. Institutions report visa interview waits stretching well beyond a year in some countries — a bottleneck that predates the current administration but has been sharpened by it.

United States: the rules themselves are now in court

On 18 August, a coalition of eight organisations filed a complaint and a motion for preliminary injunction in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s final rule ending the Duration of Status framework. The plaintiffs are NAFSA, the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, the American Federation of Teachers, Graduate Labor Organization AFT Local 6516, the UAW and its Local 2322, and the NewsGuild-CWA.

The substance matters more than the procedural noise. Since the late 1970s, F-1 students, J-1 exchange visitors and I-1 foreign media representatives have been admitted for the duration of their status — meaning a student could progress from an undergraduate degree to a master’s to a doctorate without seeking fresh permission each time. The final rule replaces that with a fixed admission period capped at four years, after which an extension application is required. The complaint argues this breaches the Administrative Procedure Act: that DHS failed to assess costs and benefits adequately, to engage meaningfully with public comments, to consider less burdensome alternatives, or to justify the rule against its own stated objectives.

The rule is due to take effect on 15 September. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV has set the government’s response for 31 August, with an in-person hearing on 9 September. In the injunction filings, institutions report students withdrawing from autumn 2026 enrolment specifically over the change, and sharp falls in international applications. Immigration counsel are advising clients to prepare for implementation regardless, since the outcome is genuinely uncertain. DHS dismissed the filing in terms that suggested no appetite for compromise.

And the accreditation system is being rewritten around it

On 20 August the Education Department published a 354-page Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register, overhauling the framework by which accreditors — the private bodies that determine which institutions can access federal student aid — are themselves recognised. It largely tracks the consensus reached in May by the Department’s Accreditation, Innovation and Modernization committee, after two negotiating sessions and nine days of deliberation involving institutions, accreditors, students, state officials and others.

The proposals would require accrediting agencies to separate fully from affiliated trade associations, refocus standards on student outcomes and graduate earnings, ease entry for new accreditors by removing the existing two-year operating requirement, and add obligations around viewpoint diversity, academic freedom and research integrity. Accreditors would be barred from maintaining standards that require race-based preferences, and institutions would have to disclose publicly any finding of non-compliance. Under Secretary Nicholas Kent framed the package as reorienting quality assurance towards outcomes rather than process and ideology; critics note it would place accreditors in the position of policing First Amendment questions on campus.

The comment window is 30 days rather than the customary 60, closing around 19 September, with a final rule targeted for 1 November and implementation from 1 July 2027. Currently accredited institutions will not face an out-of-cycle review purely because the rules change, but their next scheduled review will reflect them. Two things are worth watching: whether accreditors litigate the trade-association separation and viewpoint-neutrality provisions, and which new agencies apply for recognition once the two-year rule falls away. Separately, the Department of War has ordered research security audits at thirty academic institutions, and the Justice Department has opened an investigation into scholarship criteria at William & Mary.

England: the levy is now a certainty, not a proposal

On 13 July the Department for Education published its response to the technical consultation and confirmed that the International Student Levy will proceed. Providers in England will pay a flat £925 per international student per year, collected by the Office for Students and reinvested into higher education and skills — specifically, targeted maintenance grants for disadvantaged domestic students. It takes effect on 1 August 2028.

Two details matter for planning. Each provider gets an allowance covering its first 220 international students annually, worth roughly £200,000 of exempted liability and intended to protect smaller and specialist institutions. And two trial cycles will run across 2026–27 and 2027–28, during which no money changes hands but providers receive their calculated liability. Legislation follows in a Finance Bill after the autumn Budget.

The sector has not stopped objecting. Government modelling itself indicates a net loss of around £330 million to English providers, and at a Higher Education Policy Institute forum in July, Durham’s Vice-Chancellor Karen O’Brien described the policy as “absolute insanity” and urged ministers to drop it. Wales, notably, has ruled out applying a levy of its own.

Australia: caps by another name?

Australia’s “Open the Doors of Opportunity” bill, debated this month, legislates the role of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission in allocating both domestic teaching grants and international student places. The opposition’s education spokesman Julian Leeser argues it revives the provider-level enrolment caps that failed to pass two years ago, with real discretion resting on the education minister. The government’s current settings run on a managed-growth model rather than a hard cap: the national planning level for 2026 is 295,000 new commencements, up from 270,000, with roughly 196,750 places for higher education and the balance for vocational providers. Universities can bid for additional places by demonstrating progress on student accommodation and engagement with South-East Asia.

Canada: fewer permits, but a warmer welcome for postgraduates

Canada expects to issue up to 408,000 study permits in 2026 — 155,000 to newly arriving students and 253,000 extensions — seven per cent below the 2025 target and sixteen per cent below 2024. Within that tightening there are deliberate softenings. Since 1 January, master’s and doctoral students at public designated learning institutions no longer need a provincial or territorial attestation letter. Since 1 April, post-secondary students no longer require a separate co-op work permit for placements that form a required part of their programme and account for half or less of it.

Set against that, IRCC guidance revised in late June tightened scrutiny of enrolment status, academic progression, institutional transfers and leave from study, and narrowed post-graduation work permit eligibility for non-credit programmes. The temporary policy allowing certain work permit holders to study without a study permit expired on 27 June. Meanwhile, stakeholders are pressing for immigration advice to prospective students to be made a mandatory regulated requirement, following protests over a run of PGWP refusals.

Artificial intelligence moves from guidance to rulebook

The pattern across systems this year is a shift from advisory documents to enforceable policy. Common Sense Media’s 2026 census of more than 1,200 American children and teenagers aged 9 to 17 found that 86 per cent had used generative AI and 24 per cent used it daily; among users, 85 per cent used it for schoolwork. Regulation is chasing behaviour that is already universal.

California published a Model Policy on AI in Education on 25 June, developed by a working group convened under Senate Bill 1288 and offered to districts as an adaptable template covering legal, ethical and logistical ground. Florida’s State Board of Education held a workshop on 5 August on a proposed rule requiring every public and charter school to address AI within its internet safety policy. New Mexico is weighing a formal oversight body with authority to vet approved AI tools, citing student data privacy, academic dishonesty and cognitive over-reliance — and referencing a January 2026 Brookings study concluding that classroom risks currently outweigh benefits. Analysts at NASBE expect 2026 to be the year state boards move past issuing guidance and into monitoring implementation.

The most interesting document of the month, though, came from students. At America’s Youth AI Festival on the UMass Boston and MIT campuses in mid-July, delegates from all fifty states convened a National AI Student Senate and produced the STUDENTS FIRST Act of 2026 — a framework for responsible AI use in schools, organised by Day of AI, MIT RAISE, AASA and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute. AASA is circulating it to a network of more than 10,000 school leaders as a conversation starter rather than a finished settlement.

Phones: from controversy to convention

UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring team now counts 114 education systems — around 58 per cent of countries — with national policies banning or restricting mobile phones in schools, up from roughly a quarter of countries in 2023. Counting comprehensive bans alone, 106 countries qualify, alongside 39 American states. Somewhere in the region of 900 million students will begin this academic year under some form of restriction.

The additions keep coming: Bolivia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Georgia, the Maldives and Malta have all introduced national bans since late 2025. Sweden — long a champion of classroom technology — begins its ban this autumn as part of a broader turn back towards books. Singapore has extended its restriction from lessons to the entire school day, requiring phones and smartwatches to stay in lockers through recess and co-curricular activities, and has shifted default sleep hours on government-issued student devices to 10.30pm. In England, revised statutory guidance took effect in June and requires schools to have policies prohibiting phone use in place from September.

Public opinion is running ahead of the evidence. Pew polling from late May and early June found 77 per cent of American adults supporting bans on phone use during class, up for a second consecutive year, and 48 per cent supporting all-day bans, up from 36 per cent in 2024. Only 41 per cent of teenagers agreed. Researchers remain cautious: the studies establishing that bans actually improve attainment or wellbeing are thin, and a policy that removes a device does not by itself teach a child to concentrate.

The number that should frame everything else

UNESCO’s 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report, subtitled “Access and equity: countdown to 2030”, records 273 million children, adolescents and young people out of school — a rise for the seventh consecutive year, and one in six of the school-age population. Apply humanitarian data to fill gaps in the ten countries most affected by conflict and the true figure is understated by at least 13 million. Only two in three students complete secondary school, and on current trajectories the world does not reach 95 per cent upper-secondary completion until 2105.

It is not a story of uniform failure. Global enrolment reached 1.4 billion in 2024, up 327 million or 30 per cent since 2000, with pre-primary up 45 per cent and post-secondary up 161 per cent. Madagascar and Togo, Morocco and Viet Nam, Georgia and Türkiye have each cut out-of-school rates by at least 80 per cent since 2000; Côte d’Ivoire halved its rates across all three age groups. Ethiopia’s primary enrolment rose from 18 per cent in 1974 to 84 per cent in 2024.

The immediate risk is financial. UNICEF projects official development assistance for education falling by $3.2 billion — a 24 per cent drop from 2023 — with three donor governments accounting for nearly 80 per cent of the reduction. Twenty-eight countries stand to lose at least a quarter of the education aid they depend on, with Côte d’Ivoire and Mali among the most exposed. The estimate is that six million additional children could be out of school by the end of this year, roughly a third of them in humanitarian settings.

It is worth holding that alongside the levy debates and enrolment caps. The rich world is arguing about how to price access to its universities in the same season that the poorest countries are losing a quarter of their classroom funding.

What to watch

• Monday 31 August: DHS files its response in the Duration of Status challenge, ahead of a hearing on 9 September and the rule’s scheduled commencement on 15 September.
• September: England’s statutory phone policies come into force — enforcement, not principle, is now the story.
• Around 19 September: the compressed comment window closes on the American accreditation rule, with a final rule targeted for 1 November.
• October: the DfE’s provisional Key Stage 4 statistics, which will show whether the record regional gap survives adjustment for entry patterns.
• October–November: American autumn census data will confirm or contradict the NAFSA 9.5 per cent projection.
• Autumn Budget onwards: draft International Student Levy legislation enters a Finance Bill, with trial calculations running through 2026–27.
• Australian Senate: whether the Open the Doors of Opportunity bill passes with ministerial allocation powers intact.
• Financing: whether any donor movement offsets the projected $3.2 billion fall in education aid before year end.

Simon Uttley,

Director, KoinEd

Sources

— Washington Post — foreign student enrolment projected to fall nearly 10%

— Forbes — projected loss of international students and the $3.4bn hit

— GOV.UK — introducing an international student levy on higher education providers

— ICEF Monitor — England confirms levy implementation for August 2028

— The PIE News — England’s universities and the £925 levy

— Times Higher Education — Australian funding bill and overseas student caps

— The Conversation — Australia’s student caps easing in 2026

— Government of Canada — 2026 allocations under the international student cap

— CIC News — expanded work authorisation for students and graduates

— ICEF Monitor — updated Canadian study permit and PGWP compliance guidance

— NAFSA — coalition files federal lawsuit challenging the end of Duration of Status

— Inside Higher Ed — lawsuit seeks to vacate the Duration of Status rule

— Presidents’ Alliance — Duration of Status litigation tracker and briefing schedule

— Nixon Peabody — Education Department issues accreditation Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

— Inside Higher Ed — accreditation rule released for public comment

— Faegre Drinker — the AIM consensus and proposed accreditation changes

— Universities of Wisconsin — federal update, 21 August 2026

— FFT Education Datalab — GCSE and Level 1/2 results 2026: main trends

— Edtech Innovation Hub — London at 30.2% top grades as the regional gap reaches 11 points

— WhichSchoolAdvisor — GCSE results 2026: top grades up as pass rate dips

— Ivy Education — GCSE results day 2026 analysis

— Third Space Learning — GCSE results 2026 headlines and the Education Record app

— LBC — A-level results day 2026 and the NEET figures

— JOE — record first-choice university places on results day

— California Department of Education — model policy on AI in education

— AASA — students from all 50 states produce a national AI framework

— NASBE — states take next steps on governing AI use in schools

— Psychology Today — new rules for back to school 2026

— US News — 39 states and 106 countries now prohibit phones in class

— UNESCO GEM — phone bans in schools are spreading worldwide

— NPR — Sweden set to ban mobile phones in schools

— UNESCO — 273 million children out of school for a seventh year

— UNESCO — 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report

— UNICEF — global funding cuts could force 6 million more children out of school

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