JAKARTA - UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) updated its student-sponsor compliance guidance on June 1. Basic Compliance Assessments submitted on or after that date are subject to stricter thresholds and a new Red-Amber-Green rating system.
The rules apply to licensed education providers sponsoring international students under the Student and Child Student routes, rather than to individual applicants directly.
Sponsors must now maintain a visa-refusal rate below 5%, down from below 10%. The minimum enrolment rate has increased from 90% to 95%. The course-completion threshold remains at 85% until May 31, 2027. It will rise to 90% for assessments submitted on or after June 1, 2027.
Under the new system, a sponsor’s weakest compliance result determines its overall rating.
For visa refusals, a rate of 5% or higher triggers a red rating. A rate between 4% and below 5% is amber, and anything below 4% is green. This means that a provider performing well on enrolment and course completion can still receive an amber or red rating if its refusal rate crosses the relevant threshold. A sponsor receiving its first red rating will be placed on an action plan for at least 12 months.
UKVI will also cut its next allocation of Confirmations of Acceptance for Studies, known as CAS, by at least 10% of its previous year’s CAS usage. An amber-rated sponsor cannot receive more CAS than it previously used until it achieves a green rating.
The latest Home Office study-visa statistics, published on May 21, recorded 409,954 Sponsored Study visa grants in the year ending March 2026. This included 391,572 main applicants and 18,382 dependents.
India was the largest nationality among Sponsored Study visa recipients counted as main applicants, with 90,425 grants, or 23% of the total. China followed with 88,776 grants, also representing 23%. Nigeria ranked third with 28,405 grants.
