Indian and Bangladeshi student numbers soar on back of rule changes

According to media reports, the number of Indian and Bangladeshi students has grown significantly since the recent changes to the visa system.

Although the UK Border Agency has said that it believed that student numbers were approximately the same as this time last year, new statistics reveal that new student arrivals from the traditional hotspots has in fact tripled. Despite the growth, the Home Office is at pains to point out that this is not a global trend.

Designed to be more selective and tougher than previous schemes, the points based system was introduced amid much fanfare last year. At the time, the then Home Secretary had promised that the changes would raise the bar for quality while minimising non-EU migrant enrolments.

However, as recently as this month immigration workers made headlines after claiming that bogus students were still arriving in large numbers due to the lack of capability to perform thorough checks at border points, due largely in part to the high volume. Officers have also suggested that many of the new arrivals had been previously refused entry into the UK. Most are believed to be attempting to gain employment rather than an education. One notable case saw an immigration official claim many would-be students unable to speak English or even have knowledge of the course they claimed to study.

Bangladesh and India have both been issued with considerably more student visas than in the previous year. In the three month pre-enrolment period from June to August in 2008 the number of student visas granted by the Mumbai, Dhaka and Delhi British High Commissions’ was 6,771. The three offices have issued 19,950 new visas under the new points-based system. Rejected applications also rose to 6,261 from 3,997.