International students on UK taught master’s courses will be banned from bringing family members with them as dependants.

Only students on postgraduate courses currently designated as research programmes, which includes PhD students, will be able to bring dependants under new rules. The changes will come into effect for students starting courses from January 2024.

This makes it harder for international students to bring their families over when studying in the UK as the government limit dependant visas for these group of students.

International students are also no longer able to switch from a study visa to a work visa before completing their course, following a growing trend of newly-arrived students dropping out to work in the care sector. The graduate route, which allows international students to stay and work in the UK once they graduate, remains unchanged. 

Statistics from the Home Office published in February 2023 showed that 490,763 sponsored study visas were granted to main applicants in 2022, the highest number since comparable records began in 2005.

This was 29% more than the year before and 26% higher than the number granted in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.

Student visa holders were accompanied by a record 135,788 dependants — almost nine times the number that entered the country in 2019 and more than the total for the previous six years combined.