In November, a news story was run by various national media sources which wrongly named many fully-accredited English language centres as “banned” from bringing international students into the country.

After several months of wrangling, UKBA last week told one of the affected schools, Brighton International Summer School (BISS), that it had in fact supplied two separate lists of centres no longer on the Register of Sponsors (RoS): One list of those which had voluntarily decided to operate outside of Tier 4 but remain professionally accredited so they could use the Student Visitor Visa route. One list of those centres now, essentially, banned from operating as they no longer fulfilled their responsibility as Sponsors.

UKBA said it stressed the different reasons for removing centres from the Register in its press briefings – in effect, it blamed the media for getting the story wrong.

In effect, it blamed the media for getting the story wrong

“It is regrettable that despite the considerable efforts made by the UK Border Agency and the Home Office press office to ensure that the media outlets understood the detail of the information provided to them, that this was not better reflected by some media in their subsequent publications,” said the email to BISS.

English UK immediately brought this to the attention of the Press Association, the national news agency which had written and circulated the story and the list of “banned colleges” to media outlets.

PA swiftly agreed to “clarify” the story and sent out the following version, agreed with English UK, to all its media customers:

“In [a story] transmitted on 01/11/2011 and repeated early on 02/11/2011, we reported that hundreds of colleges had been banned from bringing foreign students into the UK as part of the Government’s plans to control immigration.

English UK, which represents accredited English language colleges, a sector worth around £2.5 billion to the UK economy, has asked us to make it clear that its members who were named had voluntarily chosen not to apply to stay on the list, for legitimate business reasons, because they can still bring in students on visitor visas and do not need a Tier 4 licence.”

PA has also taken action to ensure that any of its customer websites still displaying the banned list will remove it.

“We are hoping that everyone involved will now have a better understanding of the issues involved”

Tony Millns, Chief Executive of English UK, said: “We’re pleased that PA has acted quickly on this and included a fuller explanation of the facts for its users. We are also hoping that everyone involved, including the UKBA press team, PA and the wider media will now have a better understanding of the issues involved so that similar, potentially defamatory mistakes, will not be made on future occasions.”

In its email to BISS, the UKBA’s Litigation and Correspondence Team claimed it had even contacted a national broadcaster which ran the list on its website under the headline “banned” to reiterate that this was inaccurate and should be amended.

It explained: “In telephone briefings with journalists the day before the publication, the Home Office press office made clear that revocation of a licence did not necessarily indicate non-compliance or poor educational standards.”

However, when The PIE spoke to someone at the Home Office press office after its own statement at the time – reporting that all those schools had “lost their right to recruit international students”  – we were told there would be no change to this wording. And we saw no clear understanding shown of the admittedly complex rules for visa issuance – we were told that some schools outside of Tier 4 could accept visa nationals for up to nine months study (wrong) – it is 11 months.