I have had a query from one of our offices overseas about students wanting
to have their exam/degree scores verified. I was wondering if people from
the HE/FE Sector would care to give their comments regarding the
circumstances under which they would/would not supply this information. (BC
stands for British Council by the way).........
Some organisations (academic institutions/employers) request proof
that a academic qualification, acquired by the student in the UK, is
"genuine" or a "true photocopy of the original certificate" To obtain this
the student (based overseas but holding a UK certificate) will go to their
local BC office.
Many BC overseas offices offer this service but in many cases this
amounts to little more than a rubber stamp exercise and I feel that this
exposes BC to reputation risk. There is no consistency across offices and
what I was attempting to do was try to establish a minimum standard
procedure.
Part of this procedure would involve the BC office calling the
university/ college to ascertain whether Joe Bloggs had indeed graduated
from Bloggs university with a 2:1 in engineering in 2003. My worry was that,
while the students may be happy to give the BC officer permission to ask the
question, would universities freely give out the information in the light of
data protection? I know that degree exam results are often published in
newspaper and so wondered how confidential this information was?
Any comments, either on or off-list would be gratefully accepted.
Thank you,
Antoinette Carter
Data Protection Officer
British Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1A 2BN
Tel: +44 (0) 207 389 4970
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