To ensure the best recruitment methods and to adhere to the University’s Code of Practice, we require all staff – including our agents – to follow the correct compliance procedures.
Assessing a student's intention and ability to study in the UK
Since 2009, UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) has required international students to apply through the Tier 4 points-based system. The University holds Tier 4 sponsor status, which must be renewed annually. To maintain this status, we must demonstrate robust enrolment practices and strong student retention.
As one of our international representatives, you play a vital role in this process. We ask that you carefully consider the circumstances of prospective students and ask the questions outlined in your contract and welcome pack, including:
Personal circumstances
Financial situation and ability to fund studies
Educational background and academic suitability
Use of other recruitment representatives
Country or region of application.
While these checks can't remove all recruitment risks, they show that we apply diligent and responsible recruitment practices.
In addition, all representatives must comply with:
The University of Sunderland is committed to the UK AQF and pledge to create and maintain the highest standards of agent management, ensuring the UK remains the leading study destination for international students.
We've recently signed a pledge with the British Universities' International Liaison Association and the British Council, which declares that we're committed to:
Empowering student choice and enabling informed decision making
Ensuring good agent governance and professionalism
Promoting ethical agent practices, professional knowledge, and competency
Increasing transparency and accountability.
Agent Change Policy
When submitting an application for a student to either the University of Sunderland and/or the University of Sunderland in London, the application must be made through your agent hub account. This ensures that the application is tagged to your agency, and we can therefore pay commission on the student following their successful enrolment. Any applications submitted in this way are tagged automatically to you.
If there's an issue with your agent hub, please report it to your key contact at the University or via email to international.office@sunderland.ac.uk so that we can rectify this for you. If we receive multiple requests for direct applicants to be tagged, we'll contact you to help resolve the issues.
If you've submitted an application directly (for example, not through your portal) as an exception you must notify us within one week of their application being submitted and we can manually tag you to them. After this date, if we haven't received a tagging request, we'll consider them a direct applicant and it may not be possible to pay you the full commission for them. It's your responsibility to highlight to us that you're working with a student and have supported them in their application.
If a student approaches you having already made an application, we'll consider a request from you to tag them if they're not currently tagged to another agency.
All student tagging must be completed prior to CAS issuance. If you can't see an applicant in your agent hub, please let us know immediately so we can ensure they're tagged correctly.
We won't update tagging after a CAS is issued or at commission claim stage. If a student isn't tagged to you by then, we won't be able to pay you for them.
Once an application has been submitted to us, we won't consider an agent change.
If a student isn't satisfied with the support of the agent they're working with, they need to contact us directly themselves (we won't consider a request if made by an agent) prior to enrolment with details and evidence of why they aren't happy with the agent who submitted their application and we'll work with them directly to progress their application. If we feel the agent hasn't supported the applicant, we'll remove the tag to that agency and notify the student and agent(s) affected. To be clear, we won't allow them to change agent, so whilst an agent may support them, we won't pay commission after this point. If we're unable to resolve a case, we reserve the right to offer a split commission.
If there are any trends with why students aren't happy with an agent's support, we'll address this with the agents concerned.
