The student sponsor register has shrunk by a tenth since 2024
On 30 November 2024 the Home Office register of licensed student sponsors held 1,436 licences. On 13 October 2026 it held 1,297. That is 139 fewer, a fall of 9.7% in under two years, and it is not something you can see by looking at the register itself, which only ever shows today.
We have kept every version of the register we have downloaded since November 2024 — 120 distinct versions so far. This article is the first read-out of what they show.
The headline numbers
A licence is one sponsor on one route, so a school licensed for both the Student and Child Student routes holds two. Counted as institutions rather than licences, the register went from 1,043 to 941.
| Sponsor type | 30 November 2024 | 13 October 2026 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Independent schools | 990 | 894 | -96 | -9.7% |
| Universities and other higher education institutions | 195 | 192 | -3 | -1.5% |
| Private providers | 126 | 108 | -18 | -14.3% |
| Publicly funded colleges | 87 | 67 | -20 | -23.0% |
| Overseas higher education institutions | 30 | 28 | -2 | -6.7% |
| Embedded pathway colleges | 8 | 8 | no change |
The fall is not spread evenly. Independent schools account for the largest number of lost licences because they are by far the largest group. In proportion, publicly funded colleges and private providers have shrunk most. Universities have barely moved.
Leaving outnumbers joining by more than two to one
Across the period, 186 institutions stopped being listed and 84 were newly listed. Of those that left, 116 were independent schools, 32 private providers, 26 publicly funded colleges and 10 higher education institutions.
Those figures need one caution. The register does not say why a name disappears. When a sponsor changes its legal name or merges, the old name leaves and a new one joins, and from the outside that is indistinguishable from a closure and an unrelated opening. We found 24 cases where exactly one sponsor left and exactly one of the same type joined in the same town in the same update — the pattern a rename produces. The University of Bolton leaving on the same day the University of Greater Manchester appears in Bolton is one of them. Even with all 24 set aside, departures run well ahead of arrivals.
What a departure can mean
A sponsor that is no longer listed may have:
- changed its name or merged, and be listed under another name;
- closed, or stopped recruiting international students and given up its licence;
- been removed from the register while under investigation, which Home Office guidance provides for, and which can be temporary;
- had its licence revoked.
The register distinguishes none of these, so neither do we. Our change log says a sponsor “is no longer listed” and nothing more. If it is your sponsor, ask it directly, and read what the guidance says happens to students in each case.
How the figures were produced
Each version of the register is compared with the one before. A licence is identified by sponsor name and route; the town is used only to separate unrelated schools that share a name, because the same school is often listed under differently formatted town names from one version to the next. Changes are then grouped so that a school losing both of its routes counts once.
The archive has gaps. We hold no versions for 30 November 2024 to 21 March 2025; 30 October 2025 to 16 July 2026; 4 September 2026 to 28 September 2026, so a change in one of those periods can be placed only between two dates, and the change log shows it that way. Three versions from mid-2025 were stored in a damaged form and were skipped; the changes they contained are picked up by the next good version.
The full record, with every change and its date, is on the register changes page, where it can also be downloaded.
Sources
- UK Student Sponsors register archive and change log
- Home Office, Register of licensed sponsors: students
- Home Office, Student sponsor guidance: Student sponsor compliance
This article explains published rules and data. It is not immigration advice, and it cannot tell you how an individual application will be decided. Found an error? Tell us; corrections are recorded in the corrections log.