Updated 6.40pm - Added Konrad Mizzi comments

Just over 30 per cent of English-language students stayed with host families in 2017, up from 27 per cent a year earlier, according to new data.

There were over 87,000 foreign students attending English language courses at licensed schools last year, an increase of 13.6 per cent over 2016.

This represents 3.8 per cent of all the tourists visiting the islands.

The National Statistics Office said on Thursday that the majority of students 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 the total.

Almost a third of were aged 15 years or less, while female students
outnumbered males in all age categories.

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.

READ: Sign up for language lessons, get an EU visa

Foreign students 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, there were 1,225 teaching staff and 759 non-teaching staff amounted to 759, of which only 28 per cent were employed on a full-time basis.

At a press conference discussing the results, Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi noted that three out of every four EFL students visited a historical building while in Malta, with more than 40 per cent visiting temples or museums and around one in 10 scuba diving.

The minister thanked the Malta Tourism Authority, ELT Council and Federation of English Language Teaching Organisations.