The number of international students has risen for the first time in six years.

Education New Zealand figures show 93,500 fee-paying foreign students studied in the country last year, compared with 88,570 the previous year.

The students paid $663 million in tuition fees, up 10 per cent from 2008.

In 2003, 121,190 students paid $746m in tuition fees.

Education New Zealand chief executive Robert Stevens said people tended to stay in education longer or enter tertiary education from the labour market in tough economic times.

The organisation's target group, those in the high-income bracket, were still able to afford to study overseas, he said.

Stevens said the organisation and education providers carried out intensive marketing in China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, North America, Brazil and Germany last year.

One campaign saw the organisation run secondary school cricket competitions in New Delhi.

"Those competitions really helped put New Zealand on the map for education options and it was through a very simple marketing campaign," he said.

"It's too early for statistics around this, but anecdotally it was a great success."

More than two-thirds of New Zealand's international students studied English last year, while 19 per cent studied business-business computing and 3.8 per cent studied tourism-hospitality.

China was the country's biggest education market, with 20,780 Chinese (including Hong Kong) students last year, followed by South Korea (15,905), Japan (9697) and India (8673).

Canterbury has 15 per cent of international students.