Immigration officials have booted 298 foreign students out of the country, and requested thousands more leave the country voluntarily.

Federal government figures supplied to the Senate show 10,949 foreign students have had their visas cancelled in the last year for a wide variety of breaches.

More than 520 foreigners who claimed to be studying at universities or vocational colleges were exposed for not even being genuine students.

Nine students had their visas cancelled for supplying bogus documentation in support of their applications to study here, and almost 20 were found have provided false information to authorities.

Another 20 students had their visas revoked for more serious offences including posing a risk to the health or safety of the community.

Phil Honeywood, the chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia, said most of Australia’s 450,000 international students were doing the right thing.

“There is no doubt that some students come to Australia without the intention of being full time students, but the majority come for the right reasons because Australia affords a world class education system,” he said.

Opposition higher education spokesman Kim Carr said it was disturbing that about five per cent of student visa cancellations occurred because the person was not a genuine student.

“This is an extremely important industry in terms of its contribution to the economy and you want to be certain the quality assurance regime is there to protect students and to make sure people aren’t getting into the country in breach of their conditions,” he said.

The federal government has introduced a strengthened visa screening process, which came into effect from the beginning of the month.

Mr Honeywood said it would ensure Australia continues to have the most stringent visa screening processes in the world, by focusing additional screening activities on the regions where most of the suspect student visa applications were coming from.

Currently students from China, South Korea, India, Vietnam and Thailand had the highest visa number of visa cancellations.