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The Brief delivers sharp, five-minute updates on the policies, numbers, and market shifts shaping international students, education agents, and colleges. Each episode offers practical takeaways to help your business strategy, student advice, strengthen applications, and make smarter decisions. Fast, fact-driven, and built for busy professionals — this is the podcast to stay in the loop and stay competitive in international education.
Third one in four weeks. BSC Education, the UK English Group, is going into liquidation. Agents got the email yesterday. EC in September, ILAC in September, now BSC.
Speaker 2:And while The UK is losing language schools to the market, Australia just did it on purpose by law. That's today. Let's go.
Speaker 1:The news first. BSC told agents it will cease trading and enter liquidation That covers its UK schools, Malta, Kuwait, and its online school. They say they're working with English UK on transfers for current students and anyone with an upcoming booking.
Speaker 2:No reason given, no student numbers given, but here's what's on the public record. Back on the July 17, HMRC filed a winding up petition against BSC Education Limited in the High Court. That's The UK tax authority. Twelve weeks before this email.
Speaker 1:And the last accounts, end of twenty twenty four, about a 125,000 in the bank against 3,000,000 in liabilities.
Speaker 2:So the signs were there. Public, free to look up if you knew where to look.
Speaker 1:Now the bigger picture. Apply Board put the numbers on this last week. EC closed 25 schools across seven countries. ILAAC, Canada's biggest language school, shut down. In Canada, new study permits for language study fell 72% between 2022 and 2025.
Speaker 1:Accredited language programs there dropped from two twenty five to 152.
Speaker 2:And Australia, Its independent English sector is down 73 since twenty twenty two-twenty three. '73!
Speaker 1:Which brings us to Australia's new rules. Most of them took effect on the October 2. Eden?
Speaker 2:Three big ones. One, dependents. Most students can't bring family anymore. Exceptions are PhD students, scholarship holders, and students from ACN and Pacific countries. Two, onshore switching.
Speaker 2:Holders of 17 visa types can no longer apply for a student visa from inside Australia. That's up from nine. The new additions include working holiday visas, the four seventeen and the four sixty two, plus the four eighty two skilled worker visa and the training visa.
Speaker 1:Three.
Speaker 2:A twelve month lock. Students can't change provider in the first twelve months of their main course until mid-twenty twenty seven, and it counts from course start, so students who'd already cleared the old six months are locked in again.
Speaker 1:And then the Visas themselves. ISAF ran the numbers. The student visa grant rate fell to 75.5% in August, lowest since two thousand and six-two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2:Look at it by country. Offshore applicants from Nepal, 92% approved a year ago, 13% this August, Bangladesh, 98 down to 34, India, 72 down to 51.
Speaker 1:13% for Nepal.
Speaker 2:Now the analysis. Why are we putting BSC and Australia in the same episode?
Speaker 1:Because a language school's best customer is someone already in the country. The backpacker on a working holiday visa who decides to stay and study English. That's the classic ELICOS pipeline in Australia.
Speaker 2:And on the October 2, that pipeline closed. A working holiday maker who wants to study now has to leave Australia and apply from home. So, the market isn't killing these schools in Australia. Policy is.
Speaker 1:Different method, same result. Canada did it with CAPS. The UK has tighter rules on students bringing dependence, and its language schools are closing one by one. Australia's independent English language schools are already down 73%, and now the government has closed their biggest onshore pipeline.
Speaker 2:And here's the worrying part. Australia's opposition looked at all that and said, Not enough.
Speaker 1:On Monday, the coalition promised to scrap the temporary graduate visa, the four eighty five, for most students, cap new international students at 240,000 a year, down from about 295, cut net overseas migration to 100,000, and remove around six and fifty thousand temporary migrants.
Speaker 2:Angus Taylor's line, skilled migration, not mass migration.
Speaker 1:There are some exceptions. Ph. D, health, teaching, regional universities. But the four eighty five was the reason a lot of students picked Australia in the first place.
Speaker 2:So when we said Australia was closing the door last year and again in June, that was one party. Now it's both. The only argument left in Canberra is how hard to shut it.
Speaker 1:Even people in the sector who back the coalition are turning. Ravi Lochan Singh wrote in the koala news this week that maybe his kids were right about it.
Speaker 2:So, the so what? For agents, three things.
Speaker 1:One, the money. When a school goes under, it's the pre paid tuition and the pre paid housing that gets stuck. Students in The UK and Canada are getting placed in new schools. English UK found places for around three seventy EC students. Languages Canada placed four seventy one in four days, that's good, but a new classroom doesn't refund the money already paid.
Speaker 2:And housing is the real gap. Bayswater's CEO Stefan Rosenis wants a levy, 50p per student per week in The UK, a dollar in Canada. It would pay for up to twelve weeks of guaranteed accommodation when a school folds. His line, No student is left without a bed. Sensible.
Speaker 2:Doesn't exist yet.
Speaker 1:Two. Check before you send. BSC had an HMRC petition sitting on the public record for three months. If you're sending students and their money to a school, look it up first. It takes five minutes.
Speaker 2:Three. Australia. If you've built a business on onshore conversions, working holiday makers, people already in the country, that business changed on the October 2. Plan for offshore and plan for an Australia where the opposition wants fewer students than the government does.
Speaker 1:Third school group down in four weeks. And in Australia, both main parties now want fewer international students.
Speaker 2:Bad news, but you heard it here first. That's the brief.