CATS Global Schools attaches great importance to continuous improvement of the quality of service to our customers and clients, as well as ensuring our businesses are fully compliant with relevant regulatory bodies’ requirements. We are, therefore, formalising our Agent Compliance Management Policy.
As stipulated in the Responsibilities of the Representative section of the International Representative agreement for educational agencies, we expect recognised educational agencies of CATS Global Schools, to offer professional services to our students and parents as well as to co-operate fully with CATS Global Schools within the relevant legal and educational framework.
Monitoring of Agents
CATS Global Schools will monitor representatives’ performance in the following areas, benchmarking the performance of each individual against the group:
- Quality and accuracy of advice provided to students relating to courses offered by CATS Global Schools and its services;
- Effectiveness of screening of prospective applicants for CATS Global Schools programmes. This means ensuring they are suitably qualified for the programme of study chosen, and confirming that the main purpose of their application is to advance their studies;
- Quality of visa application services to CATS Global Schools students: this will be measured for each representative against visa refusal rates at each intake, moderated by the refusal reasons provided by UKBA in each case;
- Levels of assistance provided to CATS Global Schools, where necessary in the event of a query, regarding a student’s location or status, to assist us in ensuring students are safe and in compliance with their visa conditions at all times.
Action against underperforming agents
CATS Global Schools will take action against any representative found to:
- Provide fraudulent or falsified documentation, or misrepresent any student’s personal information; this includes ensuring appropriate invigilation environments for pre-arrival tests taken on behalf of CATS Global Schools;
- Continuous poor performance in areas as described above, for example, high visa refusal rates suggesting poor support to students when applying for visas (we note that CATS Global Schools will always first seek to support and educate its representatives as to the necessary processes to follow to ensure success);
- Withhold money received from students or from CATS Global Schools without good reason. Equally, CATS Global Schools will seek to reward positive performance with a higher level of support for its accredited agents who perform well against the criteria above.
The actions CATS Global Schools will take against representatives will be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence committed which are outlined below:
- Level 3: severe – In the event of severe offences, CATS Global Schools will cease working with the representative immediately. No new enrolments will be accepted but existing students will be supported through to the completion of their course. CATS Global Schools will routinely consider reporting the incident, including the representative responsible, to the relevant regulatory bodies such as UKBA;
- Level 2: serious – In the event of a single serious (or a moderate default over > 6 months) by any representative, CATS Global Schools will suspend the working relationship with the representative and require remedial actions to be taken by the representative to its satisfaction before considering reinstatement.
- Level 1: moderate – In the event of the representative not upholding the service level standards expected, CATS Global Schools will investigate the cause together with the agent, then work together with them on an immediate improvement plan. CATS Global Schools will then monitor the representative’s performance in the areas subject to the improvement plan closely and offer ongoing assistance where appropriate.
CATS Global Schools seeks to work with all its representatives on a continuous improvement basis and our hope and expectation is that those that choose to work with us will take advantage of the continuous training we make available through our sales managers and central Compliance and Admissions teams. In doing so we hope that no representative will require the actions detailed above.
