UK study visa brake spares Pakistan and Bangladesh, court ruling reveals

The UK Home Office's emergency brake on study visas applies to main applicants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan only, leaving Pakistan and Bangladesh — two of the largest markets for UK study visas — outside the ban. A High Court judgment has shed light on how narrowly both countries avoided being included, and on what could come next.

Key facts

• The brake covers study visa main applicants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan, introduced to clamp down on what the Home Office calls abuse of the asylum system.
• In 2025, before the brake, those four countries received 3,126 student visas between them, under 1% of the total.
• The brake runs for an initial 18-month period, so the review of the four countries falls in September 2027.
• UK universities must now keep their visa refusal rate under 5%, down from 10%, under new Basic Compliance Assessment thresholds.
• In the year to June 2026, 18.3% of Pakistani student visa applications and 14.0% of Bangladeshi ones were refused.

How does the Home Office decide which countries face a brake?

Officials used a single ratio: they counted asylum claims from people whose last visa was a student visa and divided that by the student visas issued to the same nationality in the same year. A country was flagged if the result reached 15% or more and there were at least 100 claims.

The method effectively catches small sending countries and spares large ones. For the year to September 2025, the period used for the test, Afghanistan was flagged with 470 claims against 360 visas. Pakistan recorded more than ten times as many claims, but against about 39,000 visas — a ratio of 13.9% on published data, or 14% on the Home Office's own count cited by the House of Commons Library. India's claims were a very small share of a very large number of visas. The judge accepted the method as "within the range of reasonable methodologies", and the claimants' appeal is pending.

Why were Pakistan and Bangladesh left out?

According to the High Court judgment, officials found in October 2025 that Bangladesh had met the threshold for a brake. The Home Secretary agreed to defer it because "the UK has deeper bilateral equities with Bangladesh" and acting would jeopardise other priorities, including returns cooperation. On Pakistan, officials wrote that a brake was harder to justify, but not impossible.

Iran, by contrast, passed the threshold and was included on the list the Home Secretary agreed in January 2026, but was later dropped. On the latest published data, for the year to June 2026, Pakistan and Sri Lanka sit just short of the 15% line, with Pakistan the largest of the markets measured and Bangladesh behind it.

What are Pakistani and Bangladeshi applicants facing instead?

The pressure has moved to universities. Under the tighter Basic Compliance Assessment thresholds, sponsors must hold their visa refusal rate below 5%, and the hardest markets to manage are precisely those the brake left alone. London Metropolitan University stopped recruiting in Bangladesh in July 2025, and the University of Derby paused Pakistan and Bangladesh the following March, citing refusal rates far above the new threshold. The brake's impact assessment lists this shift among its benefits, saying sponsors may pivot to other markets or adapt their application processes.

Applications are also being withdrawn before they can be refused: 11,500 student visa applications were withdrawn in the year to June 2026, double the year before. Counting withdrawals with refusals, the sector's overall rolling refusal rate is 7.5%, not 4.9%.

Could a second phase bring Pakistan back into scope?

A further step is already on paper. Bangladesh was deferred to stage two of the process, and officials considered a second trigger of 500 or more claims a year, which would catch Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nigeria and Sri Lanka among others. They held it back for later phases. Targeting individual programmes rather than whole nationalities was considered and rejected for now. No date has been given for a second phase.

The test also leaves out graduate visa holders. In the year to June 2026, asylum claims from former student visa holders fell 35% to 9,442, while claims from graduate visa holders more than doubled to 5,130. Adding graduate claims to the ratio would put Pakistan at 21.0% and Bangladesh at 20.6% — well over the line — although that is not the test the Home Office uses.

What this means for travellers

Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals are not covered by the current brake and can still apply for UK study visas, but refusal rates in these markets are far above the 5% level universities must maintain. Applicants should check whether their chosen university is still recruiting in their country before applying.

The next Home Office data release, due next month, will show where Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka stand against the 15% line for the year to September 2026. The review of the four braked countries falls in September 2027, and the claimants' appeal against the brake remains pending.