Western Australia is starting an incentive scheme for education agents to promote prospective international students. The state will be spending $10 Million as a commission on education agents bringing international students to the region. As per sources, this budget falls under the International Student Incentive project which has a total allocation of $41.2 million.
As per the WA government reports, this incentive scheme has the objective of encouraging education agents to promote Western Australia as a popular study destination. The fund of $10 Million will be provided to WA’s institutions accepting international students. Universities and colleges will be then providing additional top-up commissions to education agents. Agents will be receiving a certain incentive for each student’s enrolment.
Incentive Amount for Education Agents
As mentioned earlier, agents will give an incentive for each student’s admission. But the incentive amount differs according to the enrolment. The WA government provides the following specification in this regard:
- $1000 (plus GST) per university enrolment
- $500 (plus GST) per school, ELICOS, or VET enrolment
Only those agents who will successfully obtain the admission confirmation will be getting the additional commission. In order to participate in this scheme, the education institutions must submit an Expression of interest (EOI). After some screening, the participating organization will appear on a special list. You can view the list here.
Continuation of Student Support
Western Australia is also keeping its support for international students steady. The international students’ subsidy for accommodation will continue as before. This subsidy will provide $1,500 as an allowance for over 2500 students. This is only applicable to students studying full-time in semester 2 in the region. Along with this, about 2000 students taking eligible English language will continuously receive $1500 too.
What should Education Agents do?
As the incentive will come from education providers from Western Australia, agents whose partners fall under WA might be eligible for the incentive. But we must remember that only those providers who are approved will fall under this scheme. There are two rounds for the institutions to submit their EOI to the state. The first round already opened on the 14th of September and will end on the 31st of October. Besides this, the next round of EOI submissions will open on 1st November this year. Agents can view the eligible education providers here on this list which will be updated after the deadline closes.
If you are an education provide then there are some criteria that will make you eligible for this scheme and they are as below:
- Have a valid and active Australian Business Number (ABN).
- Have an active Australian Government Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students (CRICOS) provider code.
- The business must be based and operated in Western Australia. The registered business address must be located in the state of Western Australia.
- Be a legal entity that is able to enter into a formal funding Agreement with the Western Australian Government.
- Provide a list of agents the education provider has agreements with along with a statutory declaration signed by an appropriately authorized representative confirming that:
- The provider has a contractual agreement with the agent
- Payments provided through the Scheme will be transferred to agents in addition to their current commission rates paid to agents by each provider.
- Should have the endorsement of one or both the education standards authorities by 1 September
- Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA)
- Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA)
- Registered on a list of approved Western Australian education providers to receive funding for the Scheme. In order to be registered, providers must complete an Expression of Interest (EOI) application.
Status of International Education in Australia
Pandemic was indeed a hard time for Australia. Many international students had to leave and did not consider Australia a top destination. But things have changed now as Australia is recovering from it. There are 478,230 international students in Australia as of June 2022. This is a 10% decrease when compared to 2021.
In the past few years, Australia is welcoming a lot of students from Asian nations. The highest population of international students is from China with 133,200 students. It is followed by India in the second with 77,357 students. After that Nepal takes third place with 44,969 international students. Indonesia and Vietnam follow Nepal with 17,858 and 13,495 students each.
