In order to encourage agents to adopt ethical and professional standards of conduct, we have designed a guide to good practice:

Guide to good practice for education agents (28KB)

The aim of the guide is to raise awareness of agents' obligation, as well as the codes of practice that apply to UK providers. The guidelines play an integral component of our certificated agent training package.

The intention is to encourage agents, on an individual basis or acting in an association grouping, to develop and adopt their own good practice guide(s) based on the model given. Agents themselves will be responsible for ensuring adherence to the good practice guide and dealing with complaints. In the case of an agent association, the establishment of suitable procedures for dealing with complaints and the penalties to be imposed on offending member agents will be a matter for the association, although we may have an advisory role in this process.

In any event, the activities of an individual agent acting as a representative of a UK provider will always be subject to the controls set out as part of the service agreement between the agent and the client institution. Good practice dictates that such agreements should always include a clause stipulating that agents must follow the UK institution's published policies and codes of practice relating to international students. Where this is the case, then complaints can be dealt with under the relevant UK codes that govern the activities of UK institutions.