If you are curious about how happy the language testing industry is about changes to the SDS system in Canada, consider the following:
- Canada issued 590,570 study permits in 2022. The number of study permits issued increased year over year by 5% in Q1 of 2023 and a whopping 35% in Q2 of 2023.
- Immigration minister Marc Miller estimated today that the total number of study permit holders in Canada will hit “about 900,000” in 2023. Compare that to the 948,000 international students currently studying in the USA, according to the most recent Open Doors Statistics.
Almost everyone applying for study permits has access to the SDS system at this point.
My point here is that it’s a pretty big deal for everyone involved in language testing that SDS applicants can pick from a wide range of language tests, and are no longer forced to use IELTS scores. Other language tests certainly have opportunities to grow their market share as a result of this change.