Adding questions about visa sponsorship to organisation details

Posted on: 7 June 2023 Tags: visa sponsorship

Previously, we did some work to add questions about visa sponsorship to courses to Publish teacher training courses (Publish).

We added the same questions to the Support for Publish teacher training courses (Support) so that support agents can change visa sponsorship information on behalf of providers.

Types of visa available to candidates

Depending on a candidate’s circumstances and the course they are applying for, organisations may be able to sponsor a:

Student visa
Skilled Worker visa

The Student visa:

is available only for fee-paying courses
can only be sponsored by the accredited provider ratifying the course

The Skilled Worker visa:

is available only for salaried courses
can be sponsored by the school where the candidate would be working or by the local authority or multi-academy trust that the school operates under

What we changed

We added visa sponsorship questions to the organisation details page in Support.

How it works

Organisation details page

On the organisation details page, we show a section called ‘Visa sponsorship’. Within this section, we show a summary list containing two items:

Student visas
Skilled worker visas

If the support team or organisation has answered the questions, we show the answer and include a change link. There are 2 possible answers:

Yes - can sponsor
No - cannot sponsor

We use answers to these questions in the organisation’s or their training partners’ courses in Publish. These settings make it easier for providers to answer whether they can sponsor a Student or Skilled Worker visa for a course.

If the Support team or organisation has not answered the Student visas question, we show a message and link to:

Select if this organisation can sponsor Student visas

If the Support team or organisation has not answered the Skilled Worker visas question, we show a message and link to:

Select if this organisation can sponsor Skilled Worker visas

Student visas question page

On the Student visas question page, we ask, ‘Can this organisation sponsor Student visas they or their training partners run?’.

The question has 2 options:

When a user updates the answer, the change does not impact the courses the organisation or their training partners have already created. For clarity, we show the message:

Changing the answer will not change visa information for courses this organisation or their training partners have already created.

We do not default the question to a specific answer.

If the user has not answered the question, we show an error message:

Select if this organisation can sponsor Student visas they or their training partners run

Skilled Worker visas question page

On the Skilled Worker visas question page, we ask, ‘Can this organisation sponsor Skilled Worker visas for courses they run?’.

The question has 2 options:

When a user updates the answer, the change does not impact the courses the organisation has already created. For clarity, we show the message:

Changing the answer will not change visa information for courses this organisation has already created.

We do not default the question to a specific answer.

If the user has not answered the question, we show an error message:

Select if this organisation can sponsor Skilled Worker visas for courses they run

Further considerations

We considered some changes that we did not implement. These included:

creating an onboarding process for Publish users
changing visa sponsorship in bulk for courses

Creating an onboarding process for Publish users

Currently, we have a support process to onboard organisations onto Publish. However, we do not have a process for users to complete their setup.

We show users an empty course list when they first enter Publish. We do not tell them what information to add before creating and publishing courses.

For example, to successfully create and publish a course, a provider must have previously set up:

schools
study sites
an accredited provider - if the organisation is a training partner
visa sponsorship details

In future, we will consider creating an onboarding process for Publish users to ensure they set up their organisation correctly.

Changing visa sponsorship in bulk for courses

When users change their answers to the visa sponsorship questions at the organisation level, they or their training partners must also change each course.

We will consider improving the change visa sponsorship flow to include the option to update courses.