This information is provided as general guidance and is not a substitute for legal advice.
The Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other measures) Act 2025 (the ELA Act) received Royal Assent on 4 December 2025 and became law on 5 December 2025.
The ELA Act makes changes to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 to strengthen Australia’s international education to prevent exploitation of international students and safeguard Australia’s education and visa systems.
These changes will support you to have a good student experience and receive a quality education.
What is the “ESOS Act”?
Australia’s ESOS legislation sets out the rules for Australian education providers who deliver education to overseas students on a student visa. The ESOS Act is designed to:
- Protect Australia’s reputation for quality education
- Protect your tuition fees if something goes wrong
- Support the integrity of the student visa program.
Under the ESOS Act, every university, college, school or other education provider that teaches overseas students must meet requirements to:
- Be officially registered under the ESOS Act.
- Offer courses that meet quality standards.
- Provide support services to help students succeed.
- Make sure students are protected.
For more information on the ESOS legislative framework please click the link here.
What is changing?
Changes to the ESOS Act include:
- A new definition of ‘education agent’
- A clear definition of ‘education agent commission’ (these are payments made by education providers to education agents) and provisions to enable the Government to collect commission information and better access for education providers to information about education agents.
When deciding if a provider is “fit and proper,” ESOS Agencies must now also consider:
- if the provider (or related people) is under investigation for certain offences’, and
- ownership and control arrangements between education providers and education agents in their evaluation
- Requiring providers, excluding those listed in the Act, to teach domestic students for two years before they can apply to teach overseas students
- Allows the Minister for Education to pause applications for education provider and course registration
- If a provider does not teach a registered course to an overseas student in Australia for 12 months, their registration to teach overseas students will be automatically cancelled for all courses at all locations.
Gives the Minister for Education the ability to cancel courses or classes of courses if one or more of the following apply:
- There are systemic issues in the standard of delivery of the courses
- the courses have limited value to Australia’s skills and training needs
- it is in the public interest.
ESOS agencies are government bodies that regulate international education in Australia. The changes give ESOS agencies:
- More time to review decisions (up to 120 days) and
- allow an education provider to request to pause enforcement of the original decision while review is happening (which means the provider can keep operating during the review).
- These changes have been designed to help maintain the highest quality and regulatory standards in Australian international education programs and protect international students.
The Department of Education have published fact sheets on each of the new changes to the Bill which have been linked to the relevant headings above and can be found here.