UK Degree Assessment
 

A friend of mine has been told that they have to go through a degree assessment for a bachelor of arts degree they received from university in Swansea.

Because none of the Swansea uni's are on the list of approved UK uni's they have to get NZQA to do an assessment which I am assuming shouldn't be an issue, but is certainly a way of collecting an ever larger chunk of money.

Assuming others have had to do this, have they had any problems etc or has it been pretty straight forward?

Cheers for the help.

Re: UK Degree Assessment
 

In all honesty it can open a can of worms or it can be straightforward.
All depends on the quality of the education received and of course the content in relation to a similar field of study in nz.
The person having the Bachelor qualification assessed is looking for an equivalent level 7 degree as this is what's needed to meet the qualification requirements associated with an occupation off the ltssl.
Not saying this will happen to you but many applicants fall short and don't achieve the result they expected or hoped for, meaning they lose out on the points, meaning they have little chance of the eoi being selected.
PAR assessment is the cheaper of the two and done online and is completed using information you give answering questions. There is not submission of documents. This method has a history of not giving the desired result and sometimes not giving any result, meaning the only option is to go for IQA. This is simply (probably) due to the lack of physical evidence relating to the qualification.
IQA is the expensive full assessment and for this the person must send in a complete inventory of documents that support the application. The list is on the nzqa website under International Qualification Assessment. You also have the option of sending in work experience and/or declarations of your skills and documents relating to your work history and responsibilities. This isn't assessed but it can be a great help in the qualification assessment. The more evidence you can provide the better the chance of getting the desired result.
In my experience of qualification assessment it is more the qualifications gained in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and that neck of the woods where problems have arisen so don't worry about it too much, but it'll still pay dividends to supply every item of info possible.

Just to confirm rules relating to qualification assessment........
If a qualification isn't exempt from assessment then it must be assessed before submitting EOI.
If PAR is used for qualification assessment the result is not guaranteed and will not be sufficient for the formal application process - only IQA gives this guarantee and only IQA is recognised by immigration for formal application process.
PAR is only sufficient for submitting EOI.

Re: UK Degree Assessment
 

Cheers for the response!

The situation is that we didn't realise that the prescribed list of uni's was so narrow, so the application went in with the pre-assessment and they selected the EOI and in fact then put it through the initial check and all was still ok and they took the fees for PR. It is only now some months later that they have flagged this as an issue.

Additionally, they also accepted it for a previous application, so I think down the line if it all got silly i.e. lawyers it would go through. It's just the level of pain it takes to get it there.

Thanks again