New Immigration Rules affecting the Student and Child Student Visa Routes

Significant new Immigration Rule changes were announced on 14 October 2025 that will affect the Student and Child Student Visa routes. With the changes due to take effect from 11 November 2025, international students and student sponsors need to ensure their study visa applications and student sponsorship processes remain up to date and compliant.

Many of the upcoming changes in the Child Student Visa route introduce welcome clarifications to the child safeguarding provisions first introduced into the Child Student Visa Route in May 2025. However, some of the published changes reflect the significant immigration reforms which were announced in the Immigration White Paper earlier this year, including a reduction in length of the Graduate Visa Route.

Child Student Visa Route – Clarifications to the Safeguarding Rules

The Home Office introduced measures from 29 May 2025 designed to strengthen child safeguarding and ensure that sponsored Child Students are placed into appropriate care and living arrangements in the UK. As outlined in our previous update, New Safeguarding Rule Changes for Child Student Visa Sponsors: What You Need to Know - Doyle Clayton, additional requirements were introduced relating to ‘Nominated Guardians’.

Change to the Definition of a Nominated Guardian

Introduced as a new definition to the Immigration Rules earlier in the year, a ‘Nominated Guardian’ was defined as a person who is a carer for a Child Student visa holder outside of term time for less than 28 days. This definition will be amended to clarify:

• The 28 days must be ‘continuous’ days
• Nominated Guardians can care for Child Students during term time as well as outside term time
• Where the Child Student is a full, weekly or flexi boarder, a Nominated Guardian also cannot be a member of staff at their sponsoring school.

These are helpful changes as private foster care arrangements can be triggered (with a corresponding duty to notify the local authority) where a sponsored Child Student aged 15 and under is cared for by someone who is not their parent or a close relative for a continuous period of 28 days or more. This change helps clarify that a sponsored Child Student aged 15 or under may stay with a ‘Nominated Guardian’ for more than 28 days throughout a whole academic year (ie including school holidays) without triggering a private foster care arrangement – provided that they do not stay with their ‘Nominated Guardian’ for more than 28 consecutive days.

New ‘UK Living Arrangement’ provisions now helpfully amalgamate the different types of permitted boarding arrangements under a single boarding category of the Child Student Visa rules. These provisions also formalise a previous concessionary arrangement whereby sponsored Child Students who are flexi and weekly boarders are also allowed to be in the care of a Nominated Guardian when they are not staying at their residential boarding school.

New Definition and Evidential Requirements for a ‘Guardianship Organisation’

Many overseas parents appoint a guardianship organisation to act on their behalf to ensure the safety and care of their son or daughter when studying in the UK. Guardianship organisations often provide a local homestay family for sponsored Child Student boarders outside of school term time. Accordingly, where a Child Student will have a ‘Nominated Guardian’ arranged through such a guardianship organisation, the Home Office’s Student and Child Student Caseworker Guidance confirmed that a ‘named contact’ at the organisation can meet the ‘British Citizen or settled’ criteria of the Child Student Visa route. The guidance also set out what details the organisation needed to provide a Child Student visa applicant in their Letter of Undertaking.

The following changes will be made to the Immigration Rules to now formally recognise the role of guardianship organisations in the care of sponsored Child Students in the UK and how the associated eligibility and evidential visa requirements can be met:

• A new definition will be added to the Immigration Rules to describe a guardianship organisation. This is defined as “an organisation, with the approval of the Child Student’s parents, legal guardian or school, that arranges a nominated guardian for a Child Student.”
• A new paragraph will be added the Child Student Rules to cover the information a guardianship organisation needs to provide where an applicant does not have details of their ‘Nominated Guardian’ when they apply for their Child Student Visa. The new provisions provide in this scenario that “the named contact on the Letter of Undertaking from the guardianship organisation must be a British Citizen or settled in the UK.” The Letter of Undertaking from the Guardianship organisation must also now contain the following information:
  • The name and contact details of a member of staff at the guardianship organisation who is a British Citizen or settled in the UK;
  • The name and address of the guardianship organisation;
  • The date the guardianship organisation was established; and
  • Confirmation that all guardians that the organisation uses have a current enhanced Disclosure and Barring Check (England and Wales), Protecting Vulnerable Groups Scheme (Scotland) or Disclosure and Barring Check (Northern Ireland).

Refusal on Criminality Grounds and Those Living with Nominated Guardians

Under the new Child Student Visa rules introduced in May 2025, a Child Student’s visa application can be refused if their ‘Nominated Guardian’ in the UK regularly lives with ‘anyone’ that has a criminal conviction. This provision will be amended so that this ground of refusal only applies if the person living with the Nominated Guardian is an ‘adult’.

The change is a helpful clarification that this ground of refusal does not apply to children living with a Nominated Guardian. This change should hopefully reduce the number of UKVI further information requests asking Child Student visa applicants for additional information about children living in the same household as their Nominated Guardian.

The Child Student Visa Rules will also be amended to confirm that the following details must be provided in the Letter of Undertaking about adults that regularly live with a Nominated Guardian, “details of the name, date of birth, registered address, contact details and, if they have one, national insurance number, of any adult regularly living with the Nominated Guardian.”

Student Route – Increase to Financial Requirement from 11 November 2025

There is a maintenance requirement for Student Visa applicants to demonstrate they have sufficient funds to support themselves for each month of their course (up to nine months). The level of funds is a fixed amount per month and aligns with the maintenance loans available for home students. The level of funds that must be available each month is increasing to match the maintenance loans available for home students for the 2025/2026 academic year. For those applying on or after the 11 November 2025 on the Student Visa Route, the new amounts are as follows:

• £1529 per month in London, up to a maximum of nine months (an increase from £1,483 per month).
• £1171 per month outside London, up to a maximum of nine months (an increase from £1,136 per month).

The maximum amount of money that can be offset for accommodation will also be increased in line with the changes to the maintenance requirement. This will be £1529 for those applying under the Student Visa Route on or after 11 November 2025.

There will be no changes to the financial requirements in the Child Student Visa route, with the existing maintenance sums per month for Child Students aged 16/17 and living independently in the UK remaining unchanged.

Graduate Visa Route

As forecast in the May 2025 Immigration White Paper, the Graduate Visa Route will be reduced from two years to 18 months from 1 January 2027. As explored in further detail in our update Full speed ahead for the White Paper immigration reforms, the reduction in the length of the post study Graduate Route will not apply to anyone making a Graduate Visa application before 1 January 2027. Successful PhD or doctoral qualification holders will not be affected by the six month reduction and will continue to receive three years’ immigration permission on the Graduate Visa Route.

Students switching to Innovator Founder route

In a change to the work conditions of Student Visa holders due to take effect from 25 November 2025, a student will be permitted to be self-employed to establish a business where they have completed their sponsored studies and are switching to the Innovator Founder Visa route. This replaces a similar provision to those switching into the Start Up route, which is now closed to new applicants. Apart from this specific scenario, Student Visa holders remain strictly prohibited from being self-employed or engaging in business activities.

German School Groups

With effect from 11 November 2025, German students under the age of 19 can come to the UK without an advance permission (an Electronic Travel Authorisation or visa) when they are travelling as part of a party of five or more. The rule change will also allow EU, EEA, and Swiss nationals aged 19 and under who are studying at the school or educational institution to travel on a national identity card to the UK rather than a passport.

Removing such administrative barriers for German school groups visiting the UK mirrors the similar arrangement that the UK already has with France.