Overseas Students are worth over £8 Billion to the UK Economy

There are currently 670,000 overseas students in the UK which are worth over £8 billion to the economy. 236,000 visas were issued in 2008-09 however the number of applications rejected in the same period was 115,000 and this in part is due to the UK Border Agency (UKBA) as they tighten their grip on bogus colleges.

 

Before reaching the UK, students now need to prove that they have a place at a licensed institution and colleges have to prove that they are a genuine education provider and report students who do not attend their courses.

 

The new Tier 4 points based system introduced by the Home Office was put in place to combat the UK’s ‘Achilles Heel’ and it has already shut down several hundred bogus colleges. Those that remain now have tighter regulations to follow and involves the monitoring and reporting of student attendance and non-attendance.

 

Vizual Management Solutions Ltd (Vizual) has seen a huge demand from colleges for their attendance monitoring system. Cliff Shaw, Student Attendance Project Manager explained that “Our aim is to assist colleges who are legitimate institutions looking to provide a high standard of education to overseas students.”

 

“Our system uses a combination of biometric fingerprint technology and student ID cards which ensure students are who they say they are. This removes the unreliability associated with manual registers and that is a key area that the UKBA is concerned with. It also helps the college to reduce administration time and associated costs..”

 

“In helping with Tier 4 compliance, our system keeps colleges fully informed of all student attendance and pro-actively informs them of students to be reported to the UKBA and those whose attendance behaviour is putting them at risk.”

 

“Our student attendance monitoring system enables colleges to meet every UKBA inspection with the confidence that their student data is clear, accurate and reliable. With colleges director’s concentrating on providing the best care for their students it is appropriate that they have the best system in place.”