Wessparky21

Hi there,

I’m seeking any information on having my NVQ level 3 (City & Guilds) certificate assessed for ECA for my visa application.

I am an electrician with over 17 years experience in the trade and me and family are looking to emigrate.
My wife has a Bachelors degree in Criminology and she will have her education assessed via WES, however I am at a loose end to get my NVQs assessed by somebody.
WES nor IQAS do this and CES state that they “cannot give a meaningful assessment of NVQs”

Has anybody on here had any success having there NVQs assessed as either an electrician or plumber etc and if so how did you go about it and which institution did you use?

Is it worth a try to one of them
anyway and run the risk of having them
sent back to me after 4 months or so?

thanks for any help anyone could give me on this matter.

christmasoompa

Hi, welcome to BE.

ECA's aren't normally given for vocational or professional qualifications, only academic ones.

What visa route are you hoping to apply for though?

Wessparky21

Hi,

I’m not to sure which is the best scheme to go through and we are going to pursue legal advice for which would suit us better.

I was looking into one of the Skilled trade routes or PNP but they require either an offer of full time employment or a Canadian certificate of qualification. Both of which I do not have yet.

I am waiting on a response from itabc to see if there is a way that they could assess my NVQs along with my experience to either issue me with some sort of certificate of qualification or if there is any test or training I could come over and sit.
I am already in the process to apply for challenging my exams for Red Seal but unfortunately this does not help with the PR visa side of things or boosting our CRS score

christmasoompa

Might be easier/cheaper to just take the test on the official website? https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration...nada-tool.html

Chances are you'll need one of them, for any visa route, unless you by any chance score enough to be able to go as a Federal Skilled Worker (check your CRS score, it will need to be above approx 470 as a rough guide, possibly higher as there hasn't been a draw for over a year, so I suspect the points threshold will be rather high for a while when they do start redoing them). Get your wife to check as well, she may well be more likely to get a visa if she has a degree.

But that is why I asked about the ECA, as you may not need it depending on the visa route, so it may be a waste of money. So I'd sort out your visa route first, there's no point in paying for things you may not need.

I'd ask about this on the main part of the forum as we have a couple of Red Seal/provincial certification pros. I thought that the Red Seal endorsement could only be added to an existing provincial certification (the 'cert of qual' needed for a FST app) as it just means you can work across Canada, but it's not an area I know much about tbh. But I'd double check that, in case the Red Seal doesn't do what you need it to do. Either way you'll need to go and challenge the exam in Canada AFAIK.

Best of luck.