Choosing an education adviser in 2026: the performance data behind the sales pitch
Yes — and the list of what can be published is set out in legislation, not invented by the agency. Under section 175 of the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 (ESOS Act), as published on the Australian Government Federal Register of Legislation page for that provision in the September 2026 official text, the Secretary may cause to be published information about the exercise of functions by education agents, and the Act names the categories that information may cover: student visa applications that were granted, refused, withdrawn or are invalid; student visas granted to an agent’s students that were cancelled or ceased to be in effect; the number of students accepted for enrolment with registered providers; and completion rates for those students. What follows is general information rather than advice on any family’s circumstances, and the wording and any figures should always be read against the current official publication.
What can the government actually publish about an education agent?
Four kinds of numbers are named in the Act, and they are worth memorising before you sit down with a consultant — but the provision introduces them as categories the information “may relate to” without limiting the power, so they are a starting list rather than the outer edge of what an official disclosure can contain.
| What the number covers | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Student visa applications granted, refused, withdrawn, or invalid | The outcome record of the applications an agent lodged or was involved in |
| Student visas granted to an agent’s students that were later cancelled or ceased to be in effect | Whether enrolments survived after the visa was issued |
| Students accepted for enrolment with registered providers | Volume of placements, not quality of placement |
| Completion rates of those accepted students | Whether students finished what they were signed up for |
Read together, these four answer different questions. Grant and refusal counts speak to application handling. Cancellation and cessation counts speak to what happened afterwards. Completion rates speak to whether the course matched the student. Only the last of the three really touches on the quality of the advice, which is why a glossy success rate built on the first category alone should not end your enquiry.
Do transfers and commissions appear in the same list?
Not in the same place, and the difference matters more than it looks. The Act separately contemplates three further items — the number of transfers of accepted students from one provider to a different provider, the number of transfers from one course to a different course, and information about education agent commissions connected with the recruitment of accepted students. In the structure of the provision, those three sit with information that may be given to registered providers rather than in the publication list itself.
The practical reading is that transfer and commission data are clearly within the information ecosystem the Act creates, while whether they appear in whatever public reporting exists is a matter for the Secretary’s publication decisions rather than something the statute commands. If an agent tells you their transfer numbers are “not public information,” that may be true in practice; it does not mean the figures are unknowable to the institutions that work with them.
Why does this disclosure exist at all?
The purposes written into the provision are revealing, because they explain what the numbers were designed to do. Information may be given or published to promote compliance with the Act, the national code, the ELICOS Standards and the Foundation Program Standards; to promote compliance with the conditions of a particular student visa or student visas generally; and, in the case of information given to registered providers, to protect and enhance Australia’s reputation for quality education and training services.
Those are regulatory purposes, not consumer-rating purposes. The data exists to make non-compliance visible and to help providers manage their agent relationships. A family reading it is a secondary beneficiary, which is a useful thing to remember: the numbers were built to catch bad behaviour, not to rank advisers by skill.
Who else can see this information?
Wider than most people expect. The Secretary or the ESOS agency for a provider may share information obtained under the Act with Commonwealth or State agencies concerned with immigration or the regulation of providers, with another ESOS agency, with the TPS Director, with a Board member, and with the Overseas Students Ombudsman — and, where satisfied it is reasonably necessary for enforcement-related activities, with an enforcement body as defined in the Privacy Act 1988. Information relating to an accepted student’s student visa may also be given to that student’s registered provider, and information about how an education agent performs may be given to registered providers as well.
For a family, the consequence is simple: several official bodies and the education institutions themselves sit inside this information flow. An adviser’s record is rarely a private matter between adviser and client.
How do you test a sales pitch against these categories?
Start by asking which category the claim belongs to. “We have a 98% success rate” is a claim about granted applications, and under the Act’s own framing, granted applications sit alongside refused, withdrawn and invalid ones — the same sentence, the same disclosure. A rate quoted without its denominator, its time period and its treatment of withdrawn or invalid applications is not a statistic; it is a slogan.
Then ask what happens after the visa. Cancellation and cessation counts, and completion rates, are where a placement-driven adviser is most exposed. An agent can optimise the first number by steering students toward easier applications and still perform poorly on the others. Suppose a family is comparing two advisers with identical grant records: the one whose students complete their courses and stay with the original provider is the one whose incentives were aligned with the student’s, and the Act’s categories are precisely what make that comparison possible.
Finally, ask about movement. Transfers between providers and between courses are contemplated by the Act as information of interest. Heavy transfer activity can be entirely legitimate — a student’s plans change — but a pattern of it, especially soon after arrival, usually means the original enrolment was a poor fit or a stepping stone to something the student was not initially advised about.
What can these numbers not tell you?
Two limits are worth holding onto. First, the provision says the Secretary may cause information to be published; it is an enabling power, not a guarantee that every figure will be published for every agent in every period. Absence of published data is not evidence of a bad record, and presence of it is not a ranking.
Second, none of the categories is risk-adjusted. An agent working with straightforward, well-documented applicants will post better grant figures than one taking on complex cases, and the statute’s numbers do not distinguish the two. Nor do the published categories speak to fee arrangements, refund terms, or the quality of ongoing support — all of which belong to your contract, not to the disclosure regime.
Putting it into a first meeting
The useful questions are narrow ones that map onto the statutory categories: how many of the applications handled in the relevant period were granted, refused, withdrawn or invalid; what happened to students after the visa was granted; what the completion picture looks like; how many students moved provider or changed course, and when; and what the commission relationship with each institution is. Each of those corresponds to something the Act contemplates as information about an agent’s performance, so none of them is an unreasonable question to ask.
Where an adviser’s own figures cannot be reconciled with what is officially published, that gap is the finding. Where an adviser can walk you through all four categories without defensiveness, that is a stronger signal than any headline percentage.
How current is this?
The description above reflects the ESOS Act section 175 text published by the Australian Government Federal Register of Legislation as at September 2026. Legislative wording, the categories that may be published, and whatever reporting the Department produces under this power can all change, so treat the Federal Register of Legislation page as the authoritative version.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I see an individual education agent’s student visa grant rate?
Section 175 of the ESOS Act expressly contemplates published information about the number of student visa applications made by or on behalf of an agent’s students that were granted, refused, withdrawn or are invalid. That is the legal basis for agent-level visa outcome data existing at all. Whether a particular agent’s figures have been published at a given time depends on the Secretary’s publication decisions, not on a statutory duty to publish every number.
Does the published data include refusal numbers?
Yes — refusals appear in the same statutory sentence as grants, alongside withdrawn and invalid applications. This is why a refusal count is a fair question to ask: it is not an internal or protected metric, but one of the categories the Act identifies as information about how an education agent performs.
Are transfer numbers and commissions published too?
The Act contemplates transfers between providers, transfers between courses, and information about education agent commissions, but it places those items with information that may be given to registered providers rather than in the publication list. In practice, the institutions an agent works with may know more than is publicly posted, so a claim that such figures do not exist should be treated with caution.
Do completion rates measure teaching quality?
Not directly. Completion rates cover accepted students recruited or otherwise dealt with by an education agent, so they capture whether the match between student, course and provider held up. A low completion rate can reflect poor placement advice, a badly matched course, or circumstances entirely outside the agent’s control — the figure raises the question rather than answering it.
Is the government required to publish this for every agent?
The provision is framed as a power: the Secretary may cause information to be published. It does not mandate a complete, continuously updated public record for every agent, so the absence of published figures should not be read as a negative finding on its own.
What should I ask an adviser who quotes a 98% success rate?
Ask which of the statutory categories the number comes from, over what period, and whether withdrawn and invalid applications were counted in the denominator. Then ask the questions the sales pitch usually skips: cancellations, cessations, completion rates and transfers. An adviser who can answer all four is working with the same evidence base the legislation itself uses.