The government has indicated it could exempt English language schools from plans to cut work visas for 20-30,000 foreign students.

Photo: 123RF

It is yet to announce rule changes, but told RNZ the schools "should be confident their students will be able to work" because working in English-speaking environments would support their studies.

The schools have warned that cutting work rights for their students would kill enrolments from some countries overnight and damage an industry worth $500 million a year.

The chairperson of English New Zealand, the peak body for language schools, Wayne Dyer, said the Labour Party policy was aimed at stopping fraud and exploitation mostly involving Indian students enrolled in business courses.

"The English language sector is a completely different sector from the PTE [private training establishment] sector. The students are different, their reasons for coming are different. The level of risk associated with the schools is very, very low. NZQA and Immigration New Zealand don't see language schools as a risk at all," he said

Mr Dyer said language school enrolments had increased by about 10 percent this year, on top of a 20 percent increase in 2016 which took numbers to 24,635.

That marked a significant recovery from a slump in 2012, when enrolments fell from 24,320 to just 20,690 and a low of 19,180 in 2013.

Education Ministry statistics showed the dip led to the halving of enrolments from Saudi Arabia, Korea and Brazil. However, since then Brazilian enrolments had increased, as had enrolments from other countries including China and Japan.

Mr Dyer said Infometrics had calculated that language students contributed about $500 million to the economy and their general spending was about 10 times higher than the amounts they paid in tuition fees.

The general manager of the Campbell Institute, Tim Brown, said most language students did not work, but the possibility of doing so was an attraction.

He said getting rid of work rights would badly damage enrolments from some regions.

"We're particularly worried about losing the Latin American markets, which we've worked extremely hard to gain," he said.

"Vast majority of those students have only started coming to New Zealand since work rights were introduced for English language students so we would probably say good-bye to that market overnight."

Mr Brown said language students spent all the money they made in New Zealand.

Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen

The chief executive of Auckland school Languages International, Darren Conway, said axing work visas for language students would hurt the economy and the government needed to do more research.

"They think that by doing this they think they will be helping local employment, they will in fact cost people jobs both directly in schools but in the flow-on effect that we have from our schools."

Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway indicated English language school students would be allowed to work.

"Any job where a student is using the English language has a potential to support their study in New Zealand, so for that reason English language schools should be confident that their students will be able to work if they choose to," he said.

English language students - source countries in 2016