extending or applying for a new student visa

[houseonfire]

hi there, i see several people have previously posted with experiences similar to ours but each problem is slightly, but significantly, different, so any assistance for our own situation would be much appreciated.

I'm a UK resident, my girlfriend is Japanese, she's been in the UK for four years on two separate student visas. We've been together properly for 14 months (although had an earlier brief relationship 2 yrs 4 months ago) and have lived together for 6 months.

Her current visa expires in May 2009 and we're starting to think about options for the future. I would prefer to stay in the UK in the near future for work reasons. The ideal situation for me would be if she could continue studying here longer, either by going home and applying for another student visa or extending her current one. When her current visa expires, she will be two thirds of the way through an accounting qualification so she would like to finish that off. If she was able to return to the UK (or extend her current visa), I think we would get married. We would prefer this option because it would give us more time to cement our relationship before we got married.

I've been doing a lot of reading around the subject but there are a few things I'm still not sure about:

- if she went home and applied for a new student visa, this would essentially be her third student visa. I think she has a legitimate case (especially if she paid the fees first) because she would be be applying to finish off her current course and obtain the qualification... I guess that would be reasonable?

- the remainder of her current course would be six months. Am I right in thinking that if she did apply for a new student visa, she would only get a student visitor visa? This is not so great for us because, as I understand it, we would not be able to get married on that visa..(?). In which case, I guess it would be better to extend her current visa so she would maintain "full" student status thus making it easier for us to get married next year sometime.

i'm still somewhat of a novice in all this so any assistance or advice would be appreciated to let me know if my assumptions are on the right lines or not

thanks