International students could soon fly to Australia under pilot prog

The government in Australia's Northern Territory (NT) has announced that it was working on a pilot programme to fly in at least 70 international students to its capital city of Darwin from Singapore next month, the media reported on Tuesday.

A spokesman from NT chief minister Michael Gunner's office said late Monday that an agreement for the programme in late October was now in place with the federal government, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) said in a news report.

The NT government was working with the Charles Darwin University (CDU) on the programme.

Other Australian states have negotiated international student pilot programmes, but there have been no results so far.

It however, remained unclear who would pay for the students' flights.

In July 2019, at least 410 international students arrived in the NT in time for the second semester of study, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

In the same period this year, there were not even a single student due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Before the health criris, the NT government had announced that under an international education strategy, some 10,000 students would be able to come to the region by 2025.