Australia moving to wider sharing of education agent data
- Regulated providers in Australia will soon be able to access more agent data via the country’s PRISMS system
- The expanded data in PRISMS will allow providers to access information about all agents used by all providers, not just the education agents they currently work with
- Regulatory authorities have also expanded disclosure rules for providers with ownership positions in agencies, or, conversely, where agencies have ownership or control of a regulated institution or school
On 28 November 2025, the Australian House of Representatives passed the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025. The bill includes amendments to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act (ESOS) with the goal, the government says, of strengthening “the integrity of the international education [to] ensure it maintains its social licence.”
Those legislative amendments were explicitly aimed at strengthening integrity and transparency measures across the Australian sector, with the expectation that they would lead to new regulations via updates to Australia’s National Code of Practice for Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students.
The first of those revisions to the National Code was introduced on 20 January 2026 when new rules were published to effectively ban education providers from offering commissions to education agents when an onshore student transfers to another course/institution that is not mentioned on the student’s visa.
Most recently, a 24 February update from the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) further expands on the new transparency thresholds for education agents. ASQA is the national regulator for Australia's vocational education and training (VET) sector, and its latest guidance contains some important updates with respect to provider reporting on the use of education agents as well as the responsibility to disclose conflicts of interest.
The AQSA guidance also reveals that providers will soon be able to access more agent data via Australia's PRISMS system (Provider Registration and International Student Management System).
Specifically, AQSA refers to the ESOS Act's empowerment of the Department of Education to gather data on agent performance, including:
- The number of students admitted to AQSA-accredited providers referred by education agents
- The number of student visa applications made by students supported by an agent, and the number granted or refused for each agency
- Course completion statistics for agent-referred students
AQSA adds that:
"More information about education agents will be made available to providers through PRISMS, in addition to the existing education agent data that is available. Providers will be able to access information about all agents used by all providers, not just the education agents they currently work with."
That additional detail is understood to include reporting on:
- The number of onshore transfers associated with a given agent
- Information about agent commissions
Ownership disclosures
ASQA requires that regulated providers maintain a list of education agents they are working with, and that those agent relationships must be disclosed in PRISMS and also published on the provider's website.
The regulator now also explicitly requires that providers notify it of any conflicts of interest arising from agency control or ownership. This amounts to a duty for registered providers to inform ASQA if their institution (or some associate of the provider) assumes a position of ownership or control with respect to an education agency. Similarly, providers must also disclose if an education agent begins to own or control the provider.
Non-compliance, cautions ASQA, is "a strict liability offence," meaning that the offence is committed even in the absence of fault or criminal intent. Providers are referred to ASQA's additional guidance (and templates) for ownership and control reporting for additional detail.
For additional background, please see:
