Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures)

The Act changes education, overseas-student and family-assistance laws. Its main purposes are to strengthen integrity in international education, expand access to medical Commonwealth supported places for First Nations students, and improve early childhood education and care data and subsidy administration.

For international education, the Act defines education agents and education-agent commissions, expands fit-and-proper checks for providers, lets the Department of Education collect and share commission information, and gives ministers powers to pause some provider-registration and course-addition applications.

It also requires some prospective overseas-student providers to first deliver domestic courses for two years, allows automatic cancellation where providers have not delivered courses to overseas students for 12 consecutive months, and creates powers to suspend or cancel specified courses with systemic quality or public-interest concerns.

For offshore higher education, the Act requires Australian higher education providers to obtain TEQSAThe Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, Australia's national higher education regulator. The Act gives TEQSA an authorisation role for Australian higher education delivered offshore. authorisation before offering or conferring Australian awards for offshore courses, and to notify and report to TEQSAThe Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, Australia's national higher education regulator. The Act gives TEQSA an authorisation role for Australian higher education delivered offshore. about offshore delivery arrangements.

For First Nations medical students, the Act removes the cap on Commonwealth supported places in medicine so eligible Indigenous students who meet entry requirements can be enrolled in a Commonwealth supported placeA subsidised university place where the Commonwealth pays part of the cost and the student pays the rest. The Act uncaps medical Commonwealth supported places for eligible First Nations students. from 2026.

For early childhood education and care, the Act lets the Secretary compel some corporate childcare providers to provide cost and financial information for the Early Education Service Delivery Prices ProjectA Department of Education project to collect cost and financial information about early childhood education and care services so future reforms can be based on service-delivery costs., expands use and publication of protected provider information, and aligns retrospective Child Care SubsidyThe Commonwealth payment that helps eligible families with childcare costs. The Act changes some reconciliation date rules for subsidy entitlement and eligibility decisions. reconciliation dates with the subsidy system.

The Senate amended the bill before final passage. The final Act includes an independent review of the Schedule 1 education and overseas-student changes within two years, extra safeguards for childcare cost-data notices and course-cancellation powers, a two-year sunset for the childcare cost-data powers, and some narrower application rules.