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Students who switch courses

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I’ve just come across another good case from the Court of Appeal that came out over the summer while I was away: the fantastically named GOO and Others [2008] EWCA Civ 747. It is yet another example of a long and tarnished line of tribunal case law being overturned.

I’ve decided to create a new category of posts to try and keep track of all these examples. It seems astounding that the Tribunal is so consistently wrong on controversial legal issues. Although, it must be said, there is one example of the Court of Appeal then itself being overturned by the House of Lords.

Anyway, the tribunal repeatedly held that a student admitted for one course of study could not, if turned down for a visa extension application, succeed on appeal if that student had subsequently started another course of study. This approach depended on a very narrow and highly technical construction of the immigration rules and it caused very unfair situations to develop, as the various factual backgrounds in the Oo and others case demonstrate. For example, students arriving in the UK to study one course who found that the college had closed down and who started and were succeeding on another course lost their appeals, as did students who had switched from one course to another for other perfectly legitimate reasons.

Well, the Court of Appeal has finally remedied that. As with the highly skilled migrants case, though, not before hundreds or maybe thousands of students lost their appeals because of the tribunal’s wilfully narrow, conservative approach.

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The Free Movement blog was founded in 2007 by Colin Yeo, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers specialising in immigration law. The blog provides updates and commentary on immigration and asylum law by a variety of authors.

Comments

4 Responses

  1. I just found this blog and found it rather interesting, as my first appeal had gone against the home office and the second hearing was adjourned by the judge as the home office forgot/lost the grounds and didn’t post them to me.

    I found the grounds actually at the day of the hearing and not being a law student or having a representative had no idea what Goo [2008] EWCA Civ 747 mean’t now I do.