The UK government’s recent immigration white paper laid out a number of changes for UK institutions, including changes to compliance metrics.
It proposes to raise the minimum pass requirement of each Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) metric – which all institutions must meet – by five percentage points. Under the plans, a sponsor would have to maintain a course enrolment rate of at least 95% and a course completion rate of 90% in order to pass the compliance threshold.
A traffic-light system of green, amber, and red will be created to publicly identify which universities are in breach of their sponsor licence – with red signalling a major breach.
Of all the mooted changes laid out in the white paper, this is the one that is making UK stakeholders the most uneasy. After all, no one wants see their university get a dreaded ‘red’ rating.
This sense of trepidation is largely down to to the myriad factors beyond institutions’ control that affect whether prospective students’ visas are accepted – with all the knock-on effects on their compliance rating that this entails.
While institutions do vet international applicants before they are accepted onto programs, their visa could nevertheless be rejected due to documentation errors, Home Office decisions or – rarely – decisions at the UK border.
So is the sector right to be worried? While there is no publicly available information on the average refusal rate for each higher education institution in the UK, the latest available Home Office figures show that the vast majority of study visa applications are accepted – with a refusal rate of roughly 4% in 2024 and 2023.
OK, so it’s a bit tight – but that would mean most insitutions would be within the 5% threshold, right?
Well, not exactly. It may look as though, even if nothing changes, most institutions would be (just) within the 5% refusal threshold, but that’s not quite how it works.
While the average refusal rate gives a view of the sector overall, it doesn’t show how the rate differs across institutions, nor the reasons why. For example, some institutions may have an almost non-existent visa rate for any number of reasons – such as recruiting only a small number of international students, or accepting applications mainly from countries with high rates of visa acceptance.
Conversely, having a higher refusal rate doesn’t necessarily mean that institutions are recruiting recklessly, and could instead show that they are offering places to students from countries with traditionally high visa refusal rates.
The refusal rate also differs depending on the time of year the visa application is made – with the smaller number of prospective students applying in Q1 much more likely to be refused than the majority of people who apply in the third quarter of the year.
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In the first quarter of 2025, there was a 12% refusal rate. While this may seem high, rates for the first quarter of the year are generally higher, with a 12% visa refusal rate for the same period in 2024, according to data from ApplyBoard.
Refusal rates are also staying the same, despite an uptick in applications. Per ApplyBoard data, the number of UK visas issued in the first quarter of 2025 was 48,000 – up 27% year-on-year. But, crucially, the grant rate was 88% in both periods, showing an increased demand for student visas rather than any change to acceptance rates.
Q1… sees fewer applications, often from countries with historically higher refusal rates, while Q3 aligns with the main academic intake, where documentation tends to be stronger
Saskia Johnston, Sable International
The majority of student visa applications are made in the third quarter of each year, with this cohort generally having a very low refusal rate.
According to Saskia Johnston, client services director at Sable International – a London-based immigration consultancy – the discrepancies marked “both seasonal trends and systemic pressures”.
“Q1, covering January to March, sees fewer applications, often from countries with historically higher refusal rates, while Q3 aligns with the main academic intake, where documentation tends to be stronger and UKVI operates at full capacity,” she told The PIE News.
Johnston added that visa refusal rates are driven by a number of interconnected factors, such as challenges verifying financial documents from some places, and economic instability in source countries, as well as tighter immigration rules brought in over recent years.
“These shifts are reshaping international student mobility to the UK,” she said.
But how does the visa refusal rate change according to nationality?
An ApplyBoard analysis comparing data between Q1 2024 and the same period in 2025 gives a fascinating insight into changing study visa refusal rates by nationality. While some key markets, such as India, Nigeria and Ghana, are seeing year-on-year increases in grant rates, whereas other countries such as Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh are all seeing issuance rates fall.
Key takeaways for Q1 2025 include:
- India saw a 96% grant rate (up five percentage points year on year).
- Nigeria also saw a 96% grant rate (up seven percentage points year on year).
- Sri Lanka saw its grant rate rise to 91% (up 16 percentage points year on year).
- Ghana saw an 88% grant rate (up 12 percentage points year on year).
- Pakistan, meanwhile, saw its grant rate drop to to 74% (down eight percentage points year on year).
- Nepal saw its grant rate fall to 84% (down 14 percentage points year on year).
- Bangladesh saw its grant drop to 63% (down 15 percentage points year on year).
