OPINION: The New ESOS Amendments
With the latest ESOS Act amendments and integrity measures, the government has undeniably attempted to strengthen the framework around international education in Australia.
These changes were needed. The sector has been calling for greater oversight of unethical recruitment practices for years. But there’s a fundamental issue we’re not addressing:
The reforms regulate agents… by regulating providers.
Despite the emphasis on agent integrity, the actual obligations: reporting, monitoring, documenting commissions, maintaining transparency, and policing behaviour, all sit with the CRICOS providers.
Education agents still have no formal registration, no licensing scheme, and no central accountability mechanism. Providers carry the entire compliance risk.
The strengthened definition of “education agent” now captures anyone who engages in recruitment or provides advice, even casual contractors or offshore actors with no formal agreement.
Yet it is the provider who must:
- Identify them
- List them publicly
- Report their activity in PRISMS
- Track their commissions
- Monitor their behaviour
- Manage their risks
- Maintain evidence if things go wrong
The government’s solution to agent misconduct has effectively been to expand provider liability, not agent accountability.
The logic is understandable: providers are easier to regulate than fragmented global agent networks. But the outcome is predictable:
- More administrative load on compliance teams
- Higher operational costs
- Increased regulatory exposure
- Stricter fit-and-proper scrutiny for providers, not agents
We’ve strengthened the framework around agent activities without introducing any mechanism to regulate agents themselves.
The goals of integrity, transparency, and sector protection are important, but the current model shifts responsibility without redistributing accountability.
If Australia is serious about improving recruitment quality, preventing exploitation, and lifting standards across the international education sector, we need to consider direct agent regulation, not just indirect provider enforcement.
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