ECA document requirements by source country: the four questions each agency answers differently

Every designated ECA organisation publishes country-specific document rules, and the rules are not variations on a theme. For the same country, two of them will tell you the transcript must come from the institution that awarded the qualification and two will tell you it must come from the institution you attended — and for one large source country, one agency accepts a consolidated transcript while another states in writing that a consolidated mark sheet is not acceptable.

This page is a structural guide to reading those pages, not a copy of them. We do not reproduce any organisation’s country list, and where an agency delivers its requirements only through an interactive tool, we send you to the tool rather than restating its output. Everything quoted was read on 3 September 2026.

First: how much country-specific rule there is to read

Organisation	Countries with published country-specific requirements	Form
WES	223 countries and territories in the selector	An interactive tool that also asks whether you are “Applying for IRCC?”, so the ECA requirements can differ from the general ones
ICAS	194 in the country selector	A selector on its Required Documents page
CES	113 plus a “Country Not Listed” option	A per-country page, each with a table of required documents, required format and mode of submission
ICES	86 on one long accordion page	A single page also carrying institution restrictions
IQAS	Country-Specific Document Requirements published inside the application flow	Applicants are told: “If your country is listed, provide the documents indicated… If your country is not listed, provide the documents as described in Step 3”

A shorter list is not a narrower service. ICES says so directly: “If your country is not listed, it does not mean we cannot assess your country. If your country is not listed below, please follow the regular requirements.” What the count does tell you is how likely it is that a written, checkable rule exists for your country at that agency — and if you are choosing between agencies, that is worth more than a price difference.

The four questions every country page answers

Once you know these four, any agency’s country page becomes readable in about a minute.

1. Who has to issue the document?

This is the question with the sharpest split, and it is not a subtlety — it decides which office you write to, in which country, sometimes years after you graduated.

• For India, CES requires mark sheets “issued by the State Board of Technical Education, the State Council of Nursing and Midwifery, and/or the University Registrar/the Controller of Examinations, or one of their deputies”, and adds “(College-issued mark sheets/result cards/transcripts/records will be rejected unless from an autonomous college.)” ICES states the same principle in its own words: “Affiliated college issued marks sheets/results cards will not be accepted.”
• For Ghana, ICES publishes the mirror image as an explicit instruction for students of affiliated colleges: “official transcripts must be sent directly to ICES by institution that issues the degree. The confirmation of a credential from affiliated institutes and colleges is not acceptable, as they are not the awarding body of the credential.” It then names worked examples of the attended-institution-versus-awarding-university split.
• For the United Kingdom, CES asks for records from “the appropriate Issuing institution (usually the awarding institution) or the appropriate record keeper (Pearson Ltd) if you completed a BTEC or Edexcel certificate or diploma”. ICES agrees for the same country: HNC/HND documents must be “issued by the appropriate examining body, such as the Business & Technician Education Council (BTEC) and Edexcel”, not by the college.
• But ICAS defines official documents by the institution you attended: “Official documents are documents sent directly to ICAS by the institution you attended (or the appropriate authority).” CES’s Iran page does the same: official records must be “sent directly to CES office by the institution you attended”.

So: for a qualification taught at one place and awarded by another — a validated programme, an affiliated college, a franchised degree — the correct sender is genuinely different depending on which of the five you apply to. If your teaching institution and your awarding body are not the same legal entity, resolve this before you pay anyone. The wider question of how these agencies treat degrees taught in one country and awarded in another is covered in a degree awarded in one country and taught in another.

2. Who is allowed to have handled the envelope?

• ICES is absolute: for a document to count as official it must be “Mailed or emailed from your educational institution directly to ICES office” and the “Document has never been handled by client, client’s friend, relative or any third party”.
• ICAS agrees: “Documents submitted to ICAS in a sealed envelope by an applicant or another third party are not considered to be official documents and will not be accepted in lieu of official documents.”
• CES disagrees, and publishes the alternative on its country pages: “You can forward the original institution-sealed envelope to our office if the institution has released the official transcript to you”, provided “The envelope must be sealed by the institution with a stamp and signature over the flap.”
• IQAS allows it as a fallback: “If your issuing authority cannot mail or courier transcripts directly, you may mail or courier the sealed envelope with your official transcripts to IQAS… You cannot open the envelope.”

ICES’s own FAQ acknowledges that this causes real confusion, in an answer headed “I’ve applied to two different organizations and they have different document requirements. One requires original documents while the other requires official.” That question exists because the answer genuinely differs.

3. Is there an extra verification product, and who sells it?

Some countries have a compulsory third-party verification step layered on top of the transcript, and the agencies do not require the same ones.

• For China, both ICES and CES route post-secondary ECA documents through the national verification centre and its online service rather than accepting institutional transcripts alone. ICES states that “Applicants ordering post-secondary official documents from China for ECA purposes must go through one of the following two centres for verification”, and CES lists the specific verification reports it needs for degree certificates, graduation certificates and academic records.
• For India, WES publishes named partner routes — its 2026 India page describes documents reaching it through the National Skill Development Corporation’s digital wallet and through a verification partner — while ICES bans third-party transcript services outright: “As of June 2022, The International Credential Evaluation Service no longer accepts official documentation from any 3rd party transcript services… ICES has received several fraudulent verifications and thus puts into question the reliability of these sources.” Two designated agencies, opposite policies on third-party verification for the same country.
• For Nigeria, CES accepts documents “Sent by the ETX-NG (Electronic Transcripts and Documents Exchange in Nigeria)” and singles out one university whose graduates should use it “to avoid delay”.
• For Pakistan, ICES states: “ICES does not accept attested documents from the Higher Education Commission (HEC), but expects to see original or official documents… issued directly by the awarding institution.” CES’s rule is narrower but pointed in the same direction: “CES does not accept official documents attested by Higher Education Commission, Pakistan by email”, and its Pakistan page adds “Partial HEC attestation of marksheet/statement of marks is not be acceptable.”

4. What form must the academic record take?

• Consolidated versus year-by-year. CES’s India page states “Consolidated marksheet is not acceptable” and requires “Verified/attested year-by-year mark sheets or statement of marks”. WES’s 2026 India page states the opposite: “WES accepts both consolidated transcripts and yearly mark sheets, provided they are issued by degree-granting institutions and sent to us in a sealed envelope.” Same country, same date, two designated agencies, incompatible instructions.
• Original language. CES’s Iran page requires the record “in Farsi” and accepts English-language transcripts only from four named universities. IQAS states that translations must be “a word-for-word translation of the original document” and “do not need to be certified or notarized”. ICAS requires the translator to give “complete contact information including an e-mail address”.
• Mode of study on the face of the document. ICES’s India page requires that “the mode of delivery (regular/distance education/part-time/full-time) and campus location must also be included on the official documents or in an accompanying letter.” ICAS applies the same idea globally: “If you did not study on-campus at the institution which awarded your qualification, your documents must clearly indicate the location of study.” What each agency then does with that information is a separate question, taken up in online and distance degrees.
• Colour scans, both sides, blank pages included. CES repeats on every country page: “Scan the back of the document as well, even if it is blank.”

The rules that are not about documents at all

Three country pages carry eligibility rules that quietly decide whether an application is possible.

• Philippines, secondary education: ICES publishes that “For ECA purposes (excluding the Agri-Food Pilot), secondary education completed prior to 2019 does not qualify for evaluation. Do not submit these credentials for evaluation for an ECA.” That is a date cut-off, not a paperwork requirement, and it follows directly from the country’s own senior-high-school reform. It matters for anyone whose post-secondary credential did not come back at the level they expected, because IRCC’s fallback is to have the secondary credential assessed instead.
• Nepal, the Proficiency Certificate: both ICES and CES list the Proficiency Certificate among secondary-education documents, not post-secondary ones.
• United Arab Emirates: ICES publishes that “University-level education from the United Arab Emirates without accreditation from the Commission for Academic Accreditation… will not be evaluated.”

Institution restriction lists, and how to read them without misreading them

ICES publishes, on the same country page, named lists of institutions it “cannot” or will not evaluate. On the day we read it, those lists were long for several South Asian and West African countries — dozens of named institutions for some of them — and ICES attaches an explicit caution that the reason is not always a recognition problem in the home country. For one country it writes that many listed institutions “may still hold University Grants Commission (UGC) of India recognition, but have been included in this listing”; for another, that “many of the institutions on the list may hold Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan recognition.”

Three things follow, and all three are commonly got wrong:

1. The list is one agency’s list. It is not a national blacklist, and no other designated organisation publishes the same one. WES states only that it “reserves the right not to evaluate documents from certain institutions in its sole and absolute discretion”, without publishing names. IQAS publishes no list either but warns that “you may see a warning regarding an institution’s recognition or acceptance after selecting your institution from the lookup list.”
2. Appearing on it is not a finding about your degree. ICES describes the grounds as including “non-compliance, lack of quality measures, previous identification of sub-standard education, and institutions linked directly to fraudulent practices” — a mixed set, and it does not say which one applies to which institution.
3. It is checkable before you pay, and only on the agency’s own page. ICES: “We do not offer preliminary information prior to receiving the application.”

The one rule that is the same everywhere

Nothing starts until the documents arrive. WES removes the deadline pressure explicitly — “There is no deadline to submit your documents to WES” — and publishes a named route for applicants from a short list of countries who cannot obtain records at all. ICES takes the opposite stance on closed institutions: “There are no exceptions made for a closed institution.” That contrast is examined in when the institution is gone.

What to do with this

1. Answer the four questions above for your own country, at the specific agency you are considering, on that agency’s own page, on the day you apply.
2. If your teaching institution and awarding body differ, resolve that first. It changes who you write to, and at least two agencies would reject the wrong sender’s envelope outright.
3. Ask your institution whether it transmits electronically and through which platform. Every one of the five now publishes an electronic route, and at one of them it is the difference between two published processing times.
4. Do not order documents before you have the agency’s file or student number. CES: “Official institutional documents received prior to the submission of an online application will not be processed until all fees are paid and an online application is received.” ICAS requires a separate Official Records Request Form “for EACH qualification”.

What this page does not do

It does not reproduce any agency’s country requirements, and it does not tell you what your qualification will be reported as. Requirements change without notice and only the agency’s own page is authoritative on the day you apply. Where an agency publishes its rules only through an interactive tool, we have said so rather than restating the output.