You may be thinking of leaving the UK after your course finishes but hoping to re-enter before your immigration permission expires. If so, it is important that you read the information in this section.
If you have Student immigration permission, you should be allowed to enter the UK if you return after the end date of your course but before your permission expires (but see below if your institution has made a report to UKVI about your immigration permission).
Whether you will be allowed to enter on this basis will depend on whether Border Force Officers are satisfied, when you enter the UK, that you will complete the activity you intend to carry out and leave the UK before your permission expires, or that you will submit an in-time application to extend your immigration permission in the UK.
You should carry any relevant documentation with you when you travel to show to the Border Force Officer, if required. You may, for example, have evidence confirming your graduation date if you travel between the end of your course and before your graduation or evidence of a new immigration application. See also page 89 of the Student and Child Student caseworker guidance, where there is information about the re-entry of Students to the UK when they have finished their course, but still have Student permission (but see below if your institution has made a report to UKVI about your permission, for example, if you have completed your course early).
If you have completed your course early, the institution may have been required to make a report to the Home Office to notify them about this. There are other reasons which may have required your institution to make a report to the Home Office, for example, if you didn’t enrol, or you withdrew from your course.
If they made a report like this, your immigration permission may have been cancelled or shortened (you should receive notification about this from the Home Office but there is also a risk it might not reach you). If your permission has been shortened so that you have less than six months of permission it will ‘lapse’ if you leave the Common Travel Area (comprising the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands) and you will not be able to re-enter the UK with that permission.
