Recognition of Foreign Certificates

Secondary school leaving certificates gained abroad are subject to “nostrification”. If an international agreement on recognition of equivalence exists, confirmation of the equivalence is issued. The process of “nostrification” of documents enabling access to higher education is regulated by decrees of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport.

The authorities competent to make decisions on recognition of secondary school leaving certificates in the Czech Republic are:

Regional Education Authorities (School departments of Regional Authorities)

· for recognition of secondary school leaving certificates

· for confirmation of equivalence if there is an agreement on recognition of equivalence between the Czech Republic and the country where the documents were issued  (The Czech Republic is bound by a number of bilateral agreements on recognition of equivalence with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic and other states.)

Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport

· for all questionable cases

Applicants for recognition have to submit:

·          an application for recognition, and

·          legalized copies of documents /certificates, study reports from each study year, full description of all subjects, etc./

The documents on secondary education must be translated into Czech. The authenticity of the content of the translated documents must be verified by a competent authority.

Legalization

The authenticity of signatures and stamps on original documentation must be verified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the state which is the seat of the institution that has issued the document or by a foreign notary and the embassy of the Czech Republic in the respective country. Such legalization is not required for documents coming from countries which are parties to a relevant international agreement abolishing the requirement of legalization for foreign public documents.

Please note. The nostrification is needed only by students who wish to register at a Czech university for a degree program. It is not needed by visiting students. In theory, the recognition process should be completed by students before they register for their first day of classes in September. In practice, this is very complicated. We will therefore register all successful applicants provisionally for the first semester, while they work on their paper. The students will have to sign a special declaration confirming that they will provide us with these documents by the end of the first semester.