London: Students coming to the UK from overseas will have to be sponsored by a college licensed by the UK Border Agency, under Home Office proposals.

The colleges will have to prove they are genuine education institutions - not just routes into low skilled work.

They will have to report students who are not attending their courses.

Applicants will also need to have enough points before they can apply for a student visa. They will be fingerprinted and will need a biometric identity card.

In January it emerged that 256 of the 2,000 institutions on the country's education register had been inspected since 2005 and 124 of them, almost half, had been struck off.