“We are co-ordinating action over the way in which the Home Office allowed it to be inferred that all the colleges on that list were bogus, fronts for illegal immigration, or of poor educational quality. This has been enormously damaging to the reputation of perfectly legitimate and high-quality businesses,” said Tony Millns, chief executive of English UK.

They were described as being among 474 which have either had licences revoked, cannot sponsor any new students or have been banned following an investigation, in a statement published last week. However, at least 22 of the schools are fully-accredited English UK members which took the business decision to voluntarily resign from the Register of Sponsors this autumn. They meet high inspection standards, can still legitimately teach certain groups of international students (under the Extended Student Visitor Visa route), and have not in any sense been banned.

A spokesperson at the Home Office told The PIE News last week that there would no amendment to the current statement, despite acknowledging that the statement, “lost their right to recruit international students” should have been followed by “under the Tier 4 visa system”.

The UK private language teaching industry is furious at the latest insult made to the sector, which is already hurting from new stricter rules that mean international students at private colleges can no longer work part-time, although work rights remain for those enrolled at further education and higher education institutions.

“Our affected members are initially asking the Home Office for a full retraction of this misleading information, and they may consider pursuing those parts of the media which published the list or stories based upon it as well,” said Millns. “We and our hard-working, law-abiding members are absolutely furious about this.”

“the impression has been created that those on the banned list are untrustworthy, offering an immigration service other than education”

The legal letter issued states that, “The potential damage [to English UK members] is potentially substantial, irreparable and unquantifiable” – requesting an “immediate and unqualified apology”. The story was picked up by other media sources around the world and reported incorrectly.

Michael Cornes, Operations Director at international education provider, Study Group, stated, “The list of colleges released by the UKBA to the Press Association has been portrayed in a very misleading light. Our Embassy Summer Schools, London and South East have not been banned from anything; we no longer require licences from the UKBA as the courses on offer are quite obviously summer courses and therefore not long enough for the students taking them to require [General Student] visas.”

It is only necessary to be on the Register of Sponsors to bring in points-based visa students on the Tier 4 visa route on longer-term courses, such as a university degree. Summer schools, centres specialising in English courses of up to 11 months, and those who only take students from the EU, do not need to be points-based sponsors.

Since the UK government announced that all private language colleges would have to become re-accredited using expensive, generic accreditation bodies in order to operate in Tier 4, many schools have decided to simply move away from working with General Student Visa holders and focus on the Extended Student Visitor Visa (ESVV) market instead – which requires sector-specific accreditation but not the additional generic accreditation requirements.