The British government is seeking to increase the number of international students attending higher education in the UK by nearly a third to 600,000 in the coming decade, according to an education strategy unveiled on Saturday which contains only modest changes to visa rules.

The objective to raise foreign student numbers from 460,000 today is part of efforts to significantly boost annual education exports from ￡20bn to ￡35bn by 2030. The revenues are generated through fees, the activities of British schools abroad and support for sales by UK-based educational technology companies.

However, the new plan offers the right for students to only work for six months after undergraduate and masters’ degrees and 12 months for doctoral students, falling short of the conditions offered to students in other countries increasingly competing for international students led by the US, Canada and Australia.