Hi all

This may seem like a silly question but I am going to ask it anyway!!!

We are in the initial stages of applying to go to Canada and I have been starting to look documents out that may be needed and I was wondering if I will need my exam certificates? I only ask as they were stolen in a house robbery and I do not have copies of them. Will I need to obtain copies or not????

Thanks

Karen

Hi Karen unfortunately yes you will, Contact your old school and if they do not have the records they will put you in touch with the relevant body in the UK that keeps them (from memory theres about 5 possibilities).

And also from memory they cost about £80 and i'm sure you need to get them notarised too as being original copies which the board that supplies the certificates can do - at an extra cost

hth

Thanks for that, I thought that would be the case - will get onto my old school and college asap

You will also need them it you want to find out what they are 'worth' in the canadian system. Some canadian education courses want confirmation that you have a certain standard in canadian terms.

ditto karen; know exactly how you feel....in 1986, i had my whole life stolen; paperwork, artwork, certificates etc etc......

i've been trying to find my paperwork to support my diplomas and degree and have discovered that the open university validation centre held records of exam's up until 1992......for me this great news, as i was at uni 80/85......i am now awaiting a hopefully positive responce, so get in touch with them......

open university validation centre
44 bedford row
london
WC1R 4LL


good luck

Hi Canada Karen,

You will need them along the way so this is good preparation. I (Eamonn) still had my certificates (but more of that later) but Janet did not. If your school can figure out which examination boards they were utilising at that time, then the following resource will be helpful. When we were looking into this, I seem to recall reading that, for the generality of people, the authorities do not issue replacement certificates but rather a summary of results (which makes no odds really) but that one of the exceptions was re where original certificates were lost in a fire or theft...

http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_4521.aspx

Helen has made the good point that you may also need the certificates to prove the worth of your qualifications in Canada. This is not universally true (ie: Jan has not yet had to do this for her current employment) but I did have to do it before being allowed to enter courses that I have recently undertaken. The process for this is a little unwieldly and took several weeks to complete.

In my case, I used the following organisation to help me...

http://www.wes.org/

Essentially, you enter all your credentials online, then you go and contact all the same organisations you are going to contact anyway to get your exam certificates and get them to send a sealed copy of the same thing to WES, who then validate them and "convert" them to Canadian speak. You're probably thinking..."but that means I'm going to pay the exam boards twice for this information". Well, yes, that does indeed seem to be the case unless, somehow, you can get them to send you and WES a copy of the results simultaneously for less than the price of two separate applications, if that makes sense.:curse: Of course, you also pay WES! :curse:

There are other organisations that provide essentially the same service as WES and you can find a list of them here...

http://www.cicic.ca/en/page.aspx?sortcode=2.17.22

This link is taken from a helpful WIKI article on the subject, which you can find here.

http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Equiva...Qualifications

Hope this helps.

Eamonn & Janet.

Thanks for that - started my search today by contacting the school / college etc that I went to and was promptly informed that they only keep records for 20 years and unfortunately it is just over that since I passed my exams - the last ones being in June 1988!!!!!! They couldn't even tell me which boards they were taken under. They have given me some more numbers to call and on speking to them they have said the same and cannot guarantee they will be able to find anything due to the length of time since I passed :curse::curse::curse:

This is turning into a nightmare and all this before we have officially started the process !!!! At least I have found out now and not when we are at the point where they are waiting for them to proceed Now all I have to do is wait for another call back and keep my fingers crossed I hope they can find something otherwise I don't know what I will do

Just to add my experience on this - I've just accepted an offer to work at a university, and nobody seems to have even been slightly bothered about asking me for copies of my qualifications (I've got complete transcipts of my first and masters degrees, even took them to my interviews!)

I had a suspicion from looking at the companies that offer to convert your degree transcripts to Canadian equivalents that it may be overkill (at least for the kinds of jobs I was planning to go for) so held fire until I got here. It now appears that I won't need to bother... weird, but there you go.

[edit to add: this seems to be consistent with the 'degree' section in the wiki - although there's nothing about higher degrees in there. If I happen to hear anything about this in my new job (probably unlikely, to be honest) I'll pass the info on]

The question isn't as silly as your choice of font.