Education agents are an important part of the Australian international education industry.  They are valued and respected by Australian education institutions and the students they assist to enrol and study in Australia. This Government initiative aims to provide data to institutions on the outcomes achieved by their agents, and to see the majority of agents recognised for their high standards and levels of service.

 

 

Since 2012, the Provider Registration and International Management System (PRISMS) has enabled institutions to record the involvement of an international education agent in enrolling an international student. The department is reviewing the data and developing institution based reports on the student enrolment outcomes achieved by the institutions agents, to assist institutions to assess the performance of their agents.

 

The Australian Government Department of Education is currently undertaking work to assist institutions to meet their obligations to work with agents who meet the ethical standards set out in the National Code of Practice for Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students 2018.  This work aims to acknowledge the valuable role played by international education agents and acknowledge the good performance achieved by the majority of agents.

 

 

 

 

The reports being developed by the Department of Education aim to show the relative performance of agents used by your institution.  This will assist efforts to compare performance and identify agents with outcomes that are different to the norm, i.e. agents who perform exceptionally well or those who perform poorly.  Please see examples of the data these reports will contain. 

 

 

Recent amendments to the Education Services to Overseas Students Act 2000 (ESOS Act) which came into effect on 16 August 2017 allow the department to share education agent performance information with providers.

As a result, from 30 November 2017 providers will no longer need to declare that they have notified all of their education agents of privacy requirements in order to access the reports. All providers’ CoE administrator users will be able to request access from their “Change my Details” page in PRISMS to access reports.