UK Tier 4 sponsor numbers declining

The number of UK institutions on the Tier 4 register to accept non-EU students on student visas has fallen by more than 250 since September 2014, according to figures obtained from the Home Office by StudyTravel Magazine.

The data appears to back up recent investigations by ST Magazine that suggested private language schools were increasingly withdrawing from ISI education oversight and therefore voluntarily removing themselves from the Tier 4 register. ?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /

Figures requested from the Home Office in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by ST Magazine show that there were 1,590 sponsors as of 30 September 2014; at the time of writing there were 1,322 institutions listed as full Tier 4 sponsors.

Furthermore, the FOI revealed that in the 12-month period from the end of September 2014, 88 institutions surrendered their license, while 80 schools had their Tier 4 license revoked by the Home Office.

Many of those revocations would have related to a probe into Toeic test fraud uncovered by a BBC Panorama investigation in early 2014, following which 61 colleges had licenses revoked by November of that year.

The Home Office confirmed that it does hold information on revocations and surrenders up to February 2016, which will be released into the public domain later this month.

Nonetheless, given that the number of Tier 4 sponsors has declined from 1,466 on September 2015 to 1,322 today, it would appear that several more institutions have surrendered their licenses in the last five months or have declined to renew their license upon expiration.

The Tier 4 Sponsor Guidance document on the Home Office website states institutions can surrender their license when they no longer wish to sponsor Tier 4 students and currently have no sponsored students studying with them.

In the ST Magazine investigation last month, Huan Japes, Deputy Chief Executive for Professional Services at language school association English UK, said that a number of member language schools had dropped out of Tier 4 or were considering doing so.

He said, "This is essentially a business decision for them: for private language schools and FE colleges in particular, the Tier 4 market is in decline and so not worth the costs and additional burdens."

Huan cited immigration policy for decreasing numbers of Tier 4 language applications. "The sharp decline in Tier 4 numbers that the ELT sector has experienced is partly down to recent changes to the immigration rules in addition to market factors. Tougher refusal rates for sponsors, removal of work rights, the removal of in-UK renewals for Tier 4 students at private and FE colleges - all of these and more have eroded the market at a time that the market share for competitor destinations such as the USA, Australia and Canada, is rising."

Schools interviewed in our investigation suggested that the costs of ISI educational oversight were overly burdensome given the relatively small number of long-term (12 months or over) students.

Language schools that are accredited by one of the Home Office-approved bodies - including Accreditation UK/British Council and ABLS Accreditation - are still permitted to accept non-EU students on courses up to 11 months, regardless of Tier 4 status.

By Matthew Knott

News Editor

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