The Home Office has just dropped a critical update straight into inboxes across the sector (see below 👇). This one matters.
From 1 September 2025, if your university uses agents to recruit international students, you must be signed up to the Agent Quality Framework (AQF).
The Home Office will be releasing updated sponsor guidance shortly, but one thing is crystal clear already:
Agent data is about to become a core part of sponsor compliance.
New CAS form fields go live on 22 May 2025.
The full AQF policy kicks in from 1 September 2025.
What does this mean for your university?
If you're recruiting international students via agents, you're now responsible for:
Knowing which agents are involved in every CAS you issue.
Reporting this data to the Home Office — accurately and consistently.
Proving your compliance with the AQF framework.
This isn't optional. It's the start of a stricter compliance era. Universities that fail to adapt risk falling short of their sponsor obligations.
How AMP keeps you compliant (without breaking a sweat)
Our Agent Management Platform (AMP) was built for this moment.
AMP already:
✅ Tracks which agents recruited which students
✅ Integrates directly with CAS assignment workflows
✅ Produces real-time reports for audits and compliance
✅ Lets you maintain a verified AQF-aligned agent list
✅ Keeps everyone on your team aligned and accountable
And because AMP was designed with Home Office requirements in mind, you're not scrambling to retrofit a spreadsheet or cobble together a last-minute fix.
Let’s talk
If you're reading this thinking, "We need to get ahead of this" — you're not alone. We've already had universities calling today.
Whether you need a quick overview or a deep dive into AMP, we're here to help.
Book a 30-min call and we’ll show you how to future-proof your agent compliance before the 22 May and 1 September deadlines hit.
Contact us now or reply to this post - let’s get you AQF-ready.
Home Office email:
“2 May 2025
Good morning,
The Home Office will be updating our policy to require sponsors who use agents to recruit international students to be signed up to the Agent Quality Framework. On 22 May we will be introducing additional non-mandatory fields on the assign a CAS form, allowing sponsors to provide the details of the agent involved in recruiting the sponsored student, where an agent has been used.
Guidance setting out the requirements for sponsors in respect of the AQF requirement will be issued in due course. This guidance will subsequently be added to the student sponsor guidance when the policy comes into force on 1 September 2025.
Completing agent details on the CAS, where applicable, will become part of sponsor duties in future, however we appreciate the technological requirements for sponsors and are working with sector bodies to understand appropriate timescales – this will not be implemented as part of the 1 September 2025 update.
Kind Regards
Study Team”