CES COVID-19 Updates

We are writing to provide some service updates regarding your assessments in progress with CES.

Based on the University of Toronto and public health recommendations as they relate to the pandemic, our team continues to work from their homes. That said, we remain fully operational, and we are able to carry out most business operations as if we were physically in the administrative offices on the U of T campus. 

Mailed Institutional Documents
We are receiving mail daily and are up-to-date with our mail processing. Please take note that it takes approximately two weeks for received institutional documents to be digitized and matched to each application. Then, a notification is sent to you to confirm receipt of these documents.

Electronic Institutional Documents
We are up to date in processing electronic documents. A confirmation notification message is sent upon matching the electronic documents to the application in one to two weeks from the delivery date of the documents.

Please note that we are still unable to issue physical ECA packages, however, we continue to issue digital ECA reports. We will provide further updates as soon as they are available.

Estimated processing times are posted online, you can find them here.

Recently, CES invested in a digital credential platform called Parchment.  This platform enables you to share your institutional documents with us in a way that allows for faster processing times, is easy to use, and, most importantly, is completely secure. If your educational institution uses this service, you can request for your transcripts to be made available to CES through the Parchment platform. All your educational institution needs to do is select University of Toronto - School of Continuing Studies as the recipient.

If your institution doesn’t use Parchment but can send us your official records (such as your academic record, official transcripts, and other institutional documents) electronically, this helps us provide you with quicker service. 

We remain grateful for your patience and understanding.

We hope this email finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy. In order to keep you informed on our current processing times, we are writing to provide some updates. 

Estimated Processing Times

• If you submitted your institutional documents electronically/digitally, the processing time is approximately 15-20 weeks. 
• If you submitted your institutional documents physically via mail, the processing time has been reduced to approximately 25-30 weeks. 
• Please note that we do not start processing your application until all of your supporting documents, including the institutional documents, have been received.
• These processing timeframes do not include delivery. For more information related to processing times, please visit our website.

Click here for guidelines on how to submit digital institutional documents. If your educational institution can send us your official academic records (such as your academic record, official transcripts, and other institutional documents) electronically, this helps us provide you with quicker service. 

Mail Intake and Processing

Our team continues to work remotely, however, as of February 1st, we now have two mail clerks on-site at our office. They are processing mail in stages based on the order in which it was received. This is the first time we have had access to our mail since mid-November, and there is a very large volume to be processed.  We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to resolve this backlog.

If you have any questions throughout the assessment process, we encourage you to check out our Help Centre.  

We thank you for your continued patience, and for the trust you have placed in our service.

Warmest regards,
Comparative Education Service Team

As we approach the holiday season in Canada, we are writing to provide you with some important updates. At the same time, this also gives us another chance to express how grateful we are that you have placed your trust in our services. 

Our most important update is to let you know our offices will be closed from Wednesday December 23, 2020 until January 1, 2021, inclusive. During this time, our team will not be processing applications, or receiving client emails. We will resume regular operations remotely starting Monday, January 4, 2021. 

We appreciate you may be wondering what this means for your in-progress applications. 

PROCESSING TIMES

1) Important note: Institutional documents received electronically

• We maintain a separate processing queue for applications with institutional documents submitted electronically. These applications are less impacted by COVID-19 operational restrictions, and we continue to process them within 15-20 weeks from the date we receive all required documents. We continue to accept and process all documents submitted to our office electronically by the appropriate academic institutions.

2) If we received your paper-based, physical institutional documents on or before March 17, 2020:

• Your application is being finalized, and we are on schedule to have your electronic Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) to you by December 22, 2020. If your application requires additional authentication and/or research, you will be notified by email prior to December 22, 2020. 

3) If we received your paper-based, physical institutional documents between April 1 - October 27,2020:

• Work on these applications will resume on January 4, 2021. 
• Please note: Applications and institutional documents received between April and October and the assessment of them, have been impacted significantly by the University of Toronto office closures earlier in the year resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. From mid-March until mid-August, we were unable to process, review and upload mailed documents to your online profiles.
• At this time, we expect the processing time for files arriving to our office after April 1, 2020 and before October 27, 2020 is 40 weeks (excluding the holiday closure) from the date that we received all required institutional documents. This processing time will be updated on a monthly basis on our website from January 2021 as we expect it will go down. 

MAIL INTAKE

As you may know, Toronto is struggling again to contain the spread of COVID-19. The result is that local and provincial governments have placed public health restrictions across the city of Toronto, requiring us to close our administrative building again on November 23, 2020. This means we have not been able to access new mail arriving at our premises since the re-closing. 

Unfortunately, we do not have access to physical, paper-based institutional documents received via mail after October 27, 2020. At this time, we are unable to predict when we will be back in our administrative offices at the St. George Campus.  

WHAT TO EXPECT

Please watch your online profile and e-mail, as the Assessment Team will contact you directly at each step of the process. For more insights, you can find all relevant and up-to-date information on our website and through our Help Centre articles, including information regarding the impact of COVID-19 on our operations, and the alternative solutions we have adopted.

Once again, we thank for your continued patience. We apologize for delays in service, and wish you and your family a joyful, restful, and safe holidays.

Sincerely yours, 

The Comparative Education Service Team

Updated Dec 14: the underlined date below was corrected from November 12 to October 27, 2020.

Due to new pandemic-related restrictions, our staff will be working remotely into 2021. However, we wanted to let you know that most of our business operations will continue as normal. 

If your official transcript was received via mail on or before October 27, 2020, processing times are not affected. Unfortunately, we do not have access to official transcripts received after this date. These documents will be processed once we resume in-office operations. 
Please note that we are able to process all electronic documents remotely, so processing times for these applications will not be affected.

When your application has been processed, you will receive an electronic copy of your Educational Credential Assessment (ECA). This electronic copy can be used for all the same purposes as the hard copy, including immigration with the IRCC. Hard copies of all ECAs will be issued once we are back in the office.

We appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to ensure the safety of our staff.

This is a special message for our clients who submitted their application and institutional documents before March 18.

I would like to provide this information to those of you who have been waiting for your applications to be completed. When I last wrote to you on August 14, we had just obtained access to our offices for the first time since mid-March. On behalf of the entire team at CES, I would like to thank you once again for your continued patience.

How Much Longer?

To complete the credential assessment process for each application, there are stages that our team must complete in person, especially when official academic documents are sent to us in paper format. This is a mandatory requirement within our industry and protects the integrity of the process in which academic institutions, IRCC and yourselves, our applicants, are placing your trust. As a result, our inability to access our offices for five months created tremendous delays. We share your frustration in this and are once again extremely sorry for the inconvenience it causes you. We are continuing to work as hard as we can to mitigate these long waits.

Since we have resumed partial in-office operations mid-August, we have been able to finalize all December and most January applications. This means that:

• If your official documents reached us in late January, you may expect the process to be complete in the next two weeks
• If your official documents reached us in February, your application will be finalized in October-November
• If they got to us in March, your file will be completed in December

We appreciate that this news may disappoint you and know many of you would like to speed up the process. As most of our staff continues to work remotely, we have maintained a separate queue for applications where transcripts are submitted to us electronically, and this second one is somewhat ahead. If your former academic institution(s) is now able to issue official digital transcripts, we may be able to accelerate the issuance of your ECA report. Please review the instructions here.

NOTE: For those of you whose institutional documents are in transit, if you receive an email from us confirming its receipt during the month of October, the timeline above will apply to you as well. Please reach out to your academic institution and/or the courier service provider if that is not the case, as all incoming mail will have been entered into our system by the end of October.

Efforts We Have Implemented

Focus on Applications
In our e-mail from August 14, I let you know that our first priority is applications. E-mails are answered as we are able, but staff resources have been redirected to getting applications caught up. We remain committed to focusing as many resources as possible toward processing your files. Responding to e-mail or live-chat messages asking for status updates pulls our attention from your applications. Because of this, we are asking that you please not e-mail or go to live chat for status updates.

Your Personal CES Representative
As a result of this shift in focus, we know many of you have been waiting for a long time for a response to your individual inquiries and we want to make this a better experience for you. With that in mind, we have great news: in October, you will be receiving an e-mail from your personal CES Representative, who will provide any welcome clarifications about the process behind-the-scenes and monitor the progress of your application, so you can rest assured and informed. 

Expanded Assessment Team
We have obtained the green light to hire more people, in particular in the area of academic document authentication, where most of the delays have occurred. The expanded Assessment Team will be able to process applications faster.

What To Expect

Please watch your online profile and e-mail, as the Assessment Team will contact you directly at each step of the process. This is where you can access the most up-to-date information about the progress of your application. 

For more insights, you can find all relevant and up-to-date information on our website and through our Help Centre articles, including the impact of COVID-19 on our operations and the alternative solutions we have adopted.

We can never say this enough times: thank you for the trust you have placed in the Comparative Education Service.  

Wishing you and yours health and care,

Maia Korotkina, LL.M.
Manager
 

Dear CES Applicants,

We write to you today with some good news: the University of Toronto Comparative Education Service has received permission for a limited number of our staff to return to the office. Most of our team continues to process applications from their home, as the majority of the UofT campus remains closed.

We invite you to please take note of the following:

• Processing physical mail: We need some time to organize our transition back to the office.  We will process the incoming mail in stages based on the order in which applications were received. We are getting access to our physical mail for the first time since mid-March. There are thousands of pieces of mail to sort through, so we are asking that you please continue to bear with us. 
• Receiving new mail: We are once again able to receive new packages at our main address (158 St-George St, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2V8) via regular mail and/or courier service. Please note that incoming mail will be processed sequentially.
• No public access: We must remain in compliance with instructions issued by government authorities and the University of Toronto while we continue through the pandemic.  It is important to note that as a result, the office building remains strictly closed to the public.
• Two processing queues: A separate queue is maintained for applications where official transcripts were sent to us electronically. These will continue to be processed through a parallel stream. We strive to uphold the 15-week processing times whenever we can. 
• Ensuring quality standards: Our Assessment Team is working hard to complete the recognition, authentication, and comparability components of your international credential assessment. In cases where we determine more additional information is required, from you or your former academic institution, we will promptly reach out. We appreciate these requests for extra information can slow down your application, but they are necessary to ensure our quality standards. 
• E-Copy of your ECA report: Please note that you may continue to use your electronic copy of the ECA Report until we finalize the processing of your application with the issuance of the official paper copies.
• Please note that the building remains strictly closed to the public.
• Courier: If you have selected and paid for the courier option, your ECA report package will be dispatched sequentially, based on the date on which your application was finalized from March 18th onwards. 
• Pick-up: If you have selected pick-up, your ECA report package will still be prepared and continue to be held at our premises until we are given permission to open access to our valued customers. We are suspending our 30-day pick-up policy so no ECA Report package will be shredded. If you wish for your package to be couriered instead, please note that you may contact us by e-mail at ces@learn.utoronto.ca to receive instructions on how to make the request and pay the related service fee.

*If your application includes credentials from Pakistan, please refer to our Help Centre article for additional information.

Our entire team is committed to the quality of your assessment and we know the impact our work has on your professional, academic and immigration needs. Each of us are deeply aware of the stakes involved for you, as well as the pressing deadlines you are facing. We will continue to do all we can under the circumstances to minimize the delays you have encountered.

Next Steps

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Our plan is to focus all effort on processing the applications we have received to-date. If we are able to dedicate as much effort as possible to the physical mail, it will help us process your files as quickly as possible. A few things to please note:

• As we focus all of our resources toward processing your applications, please note that the phone line of the Comparative Education Service is temporarily suspended. You may still connect with us via e-mail and/or our live chat options.
• Please note that applications continue to be processed in the order they were received. No priority processing request can be granted, and inquiries about the status of an application cannot be answered promptly. 
• We invite you to follow the progress of your application on your online profile. 
• As your application moves through the review process, we continue to inform you at every stage. If any further information is required, we will be in contact with you. 

Please consult our Help Centre for any additional information about our policies and procedures.

We appreciate the challenges that COVID-19 is causing for so many. While we all work together, we remain here to support you.  

Wishing you all continued care, health and comfort,

Maia Korotkina, LL.M.
Manager
Comparative Education Service
University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies
 

Dear CES Applicants,

Greetings from the Comparative Education Service team at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. As has been our custom now since the COVID-19 restrictions came into effect, we are reaching out to you with a brief update. 

STATE OF EMERGENCY EXTENDED

We continue to abide by the strict guidelines issued by public health authorities within the Government of Ontario and the City of Toronto as well as the instructions of the University of Toronto, by which we are bound. The provincial government has further extended the state of emergency until June 30.  

While these constraints and their repercussions are out of our hands, we deeply appreciate the pressures and looming deadlines you are facing and have been doing all we can to speed up the process within all resources at our disposal. We have been notified that the majority of staff will continue to work remotely until the fall, but we hope to be given permission to resume in-office operations at a reduced staff capacity later on this summer.

In the meantime, we are committed to minimizing delays and completing any processes that can be conducted remotely, including document authentication.

INCOMING MAIL

For applicants whose institutional documents are in transit, please note that we have made arrangements with courier service companies, including DHL, FedEx, and UPS, to redirect all CES packages to the University of Toronto’s Mailroom. Canada Post does the same with all regular mail. Once on-site operations are allowed to resume, Campus Mail Services will deliver them to our offices.

I understand that this does not suffice to fully reassure you under these circumstances, but please rest assured that packages addressed to CES will remain securely on University of Toronto premises while we await the resumption of our in-office operations.

ADDRESSING YOUR CONCERNS

The entire team remains genuinely and deeply committed to supporting you throughout this process. 

Following our webinars on May 19, 20 and 21, we are hosting follow-up Q&A sessions in French and Urdu on Tuesday, June 9. If you would like to schedule an additional short session in Mandarin, Farsi, Russian, Korean, German, or Arabic, please let us know at ces@learn.utoronto.ca. 

We have also updated our website with answers to your top 10 most common questions. We ask you to please review our COVID-19 Updates and FAQ prior to reaching out to us with your individual inquiries. 

As always, we are grateful for your trust in the Comparative Education Service and are eager to be of service to you in your immigration, academic and professional pursuits.
Wishing you all health, warmth, and hope,

Maia Korotkina, LL.M.
Manager, Comparative Education Service

Dear CES Applicants,

As we near the end of May and wrap up the 10th week of remote service continuity, I would like to highlight once more how cognizant we are of the pressures you are facing and how deeply we appreciate your collaboration in turn. 

To those who were able to accept our invitation and join in for one of the three webinars last week, we ask you to please take a moment to fill out the POST-WEBINAR SURVEY by Friday, May 29. Your feedback will be used to conduct follow-up sessions in French, Tamil, Urdu, and other languages as needed. It will also guide our efforts in producing more webinars and/or videos about CES processes, so that we can continue to enhance the clarity and value of our communications.

Many of you echoed similar questions during the webinar as in the individual inquiries you have been sending us about the progress of your application. We have heard your concerns. Please find below the answers to the 10 most common questions about the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on our operations and the alternative measures we have adopted.

Nous sommes à votre disposition pour toute question ou clarification en français. Nous vous invitons à répondre au sondage de rétroaction pour le webinaire et à y inscrire votre adresse courriel. Nous vous enverrons une invitation spéciale pour un survol des questions ci-dessous en français et toute autre précision relative à nos politiques et procédures en vigueur.

 

IMPACT OF OFFICE CLOSURE

1. My physical academic documents were received at your office before March 18, 2020. My online status marks stages 1 and 2 complete. Is my application affected?

Yes. All applications in progress are affected by our inability to access our premises. The Assessment Team that conducts the 3rd step, “Authentication Review,” cannot complete this step without access to the office if your institution sent us hard copies of your academic record. 
We can, however, conduct the review of your academic documents if your former academic institution can issue them electronically. Please see question 4 below.

2. My physical academic documents were received at your office after March 18, 2020. Have you received them?

As we have not had any access to our offices since this time, we are unable to confirm whether your academic documents have reached the University of Toronto premises. Once in-office operations are allowed to resume, we will coordinate delivery with UofT Campus Mail Services and courier companies. We will then process incoming mail sequentially and update your file accordingly. 

3. My academic institution is about to send you my official transcripts / I have an institutionally-sealed envelope with my official transcripts in my possession. How should we send it?

Until our in-office operations resume:

• We advise you to use only regular postal service, as we do not have the ability to receive packages via courier service providers. The University of Toronto's Campus Mail services will deliver all envelopes sent through regular mail upon our return to the premises.
• If the sealed institutional envelope is in your possession, you may choose to hold on the package for the time being and send it to us via courier only after our in-office operations are allowed to resume. Do not open the envelope, as the documents will instantly lose their official status if you do.
• If you have already sent us a package via a courier service, we recommend that you contact them to ensure it will be held at the company’s site beyond their standard storage policy. We are likewise in communication with the major courier service providers to assess their ability to accommodate us based on impacted volumes.

4. What are the alternative solutions you are adopting to proceed with my application remotely? 

CES is implementing alternative, digital measures for the Authentication Review (stage 3) of your application on a case-by-case basis if you submitted it in December, January or early February:

Official Electronic Academic Records
Official academic records that are issued electronically and transmitted via established, secure inter-institutional means are accepted for review. If you wish to partake of this digital alternative, even if we have already received physical copies of your transcripts in our offices, you may contact your academic institution to request that they send your academic documents to us directly to ces.transcripts@utoronto.ca.

Alternative Verification Resources
In cases when official academic records are inaccessible as a result of our or the issuing institution’s operational limitations, we may employ alternative authentication resources, including, but not limited to, public registries of graduates / credentials or other digital depositories of student records provided by recognized institutional or governmental authorities. We do this proactively, without any action on your part.

Inter-Institutional Verification Procedures
In cases when neither physical academic records nor electronic alternatives are available, we may contact an authorized official of the issuing institution or competent government authority in the source country directly to verify your student records. 
For all applications with academic documents received February 15-onward, we will likewise consider alternative procedures in the next phase – that is, if it remains pertinent to do so, depending on the context and extension of the restrictions in place. If we are allowed to return to the office in the upcoming weeks, we might not need to adopt alternative measures for your application once we can resume sequential processing for physical academic documents.

5. Can you expedite the processing of my application?

We are attempting digital alternatives whenever available for applications submitted in December, January and early February as these files would have all been finalized at this time. In order to maintain equitable access and our unwavering commitment to quality, client care, transparency and accountability, we continue to process applications in the order in which they were received.

If your academic institution provides electronic issuance and/or verification of academic records, we may be able to finalize the work on your file without further delays. Please reach out to us.

6. My institution is temporarily closed and cannot send electronic transcripts. What can I do?

Please rest assured that there is no obligation, nor expectation for you to explore these alternative options. Many institutions face closure or other restrictions to their activities. Your application will not be canceled, closed or face further delays due to the temporary inability to obtain official transcripts, or electronic copies of the official transcripts that were already issued in hard copy. 
Once we regain access to our offices, we will review the physical documents sent to us by your institution(s) and continue to process all applications sequentially. 

7. Can you assess my file based on my own scanned documents only? Can you make exceptions during this time?

No. CES ECA reports give immigration authorities, employers, educational institutions and regulatory bodies confidence in three elements: the recognition status of your program and institution, the authenticity of your particular documents, and the comparability of these credentials in the Canadian context. We strive to accommodate and remove barriers whenever possible, but we cannot compromise the integrity of the process by waiving the official document requirement. This quality assurance is the very foundation on which you have placed your trust in the Comparative Education Service.

8. Have the processing times been affected due to the operational restrictions?

Yes. Regrettably, processing times have been paused for the past 10 weeks due to the limitations on stages 2 and 3 of your application. Thanks to the alternative measures, we have been able to proceed and finalize close to 2,000 applications. That being said, the majority of files are on hold due to our inability to access and authenticate physical documents in our offices and the operational constraints of the issuing academic institutions. 

9. How long will it take to receive my report? When will your in-office operations resume?

We are unable to provide an estimate at this time. As outlined in question 8, please disregard the past 10 weeks from the expected processing time frames, unless alternative digital options are available for your application. Please rest assured that we will regain full speed as soon as we are able to return to our premises. We will keep you informed of our progress and share every update provided by the Government of Ontario and the University of Toronto in the weeks ahead as we obtain more clarity about the gradual reopening of our offices.

10. Will IRCC, academic institutions, professional bodies, and employers accept the electronic ECA Report, even if it is “unofficial”? 

Yes. Official CES ECA reports are printed on security paper; they will be issued and sent to you once our in-office operations are allowed to resume. In the interim, you may submit your electronic ECA report as part of your immigration, employment, and academic applications. IRCC welcomes our e-reports for the entire duration of the office closures.

We also communicate promptly and proactively with institutional recipients about these interim measures. If the employer / regulatory body / academic institution to which you are submitting your ECA report requires a confirmation of its validity, please ask them to e-mail us at ces@learn.utoronto.ca. 

In closing, we invite you to keep monitoring your inbox for upcoming notifications and check our Help Centre article dedicated to CES Updates & FAQs regarding COVID-19 for up-to-date information on the way forward. We thank you for your patience as we continue to mobilize all resources at our disposal. 

Au plaisir,
 
Maia Korotkina, LL.M.
Manager

Dear CES Applicants,

Once again, we hope this message finds you navigating this extraordinary period with health, care and fortitude. This past weekend marked Mother’s Day in Canada, so I take this opportunity to wish you all affection and resolve. 

Speaking of resolve, please know that we recognize the pressing deadlines and high stakes involved for each of you and your families. Whether you are pursuing academic, professional, licensing, or immigration plans, we are honoured that you have entrusted the University of Toronto Comparative Education Service with your credential assessment. 

Here are some items of note and an announcement as we embark upon the 9th week of COVID-19 restrictions:

1. OFFICE CLOSURES AND MAIL DELIVERY

As you all know, all staff have been working remotely since March 18, 2020. Buildings are closed. Our team cannot access the premises to review in-progress files, nor can we receive new incoming mail. If you or your former academic institution plans to send us paper copies of your official transcripts, please note:

• We advise you to use only regular postal service at this time, as we do not have the ability to receive packages via courier service providers. The University of Toronto's Campus Mail services will deliver all envelopes sent through regular mail upon our return to the premises.
• If the sealed institutional envelope is in your possession, you may choose to hold on the package for the time being and send it to us via courier only after our in-office operations are allowed to resume.
• If you have already sent us a package via a courier service, we recommend that you contact them to ensure it will be held at the company’s site beyond their standard storage policy. We are likewise in communication with the major courier service providers to assess their ability to accommodate us based on impacted volumes.

2. ALTERNATIVE PROCEDURES FOR THE AUTHENTICATION OF ACADEMIC RECORDS

The abrupt transition to remote work has propelled us toward alternative solutions in moving forward with your applications. As mentioned in our prior e-mails of April 28 and May 5, many institutions face closure or constraints around their operations, but our team is pursuing digital options wherever available, and making efforts to contact those institutions that remain active in some capacity. This includes digital verification resources provided by recognized institutional or governmental authorities, inter-institutional verification procedures, and the receipt and review of electronically-issued official academic records sent to our dedicated inter-institutional inbox.

At the moment, we are focusing on alternative means to finalize in-progress applications from December, January and early February. These files would have all been finalized by now if our Assessment Team had had the opportunity to conduct the third step of the process (Authentication / Verification of Academic Records) in person. 

On a final note, if your application and/or your academic records were submitted after February 15, we will likewise consider alternative procedures for your file as the year progresses – that is, if it remains pertinent to do so, depending on the context in Ontario and the extension of the restrictions in force. 

3. OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU 

Hundreds of you continue to reach out to us with specific inquiries pertaining to the progress of your application. We welcome the opportunity to connect with each of you individually and are doing our best to address each request with minimal delay. Given this volume, please bear with us as it might take up to a week to respond. 

4. ELECTRONIC ECA REPORTS

For the duration of our office closure, ECA reports will be issued and dispatched electronically. Official paper copies will be printed and delivered to you once we are able to do so. For the time being, the digital copy you receive from us may be referenced and submitted instead of the physical one. IRCC and other stakeholders are fully supportive of this interim solution.

If the employer / regulatory body / academic institution to which you are submitting your ECA report requires a confirmation of its validity, please ask them to e-mail us at ces@learn.utoronto.ca and I will personally provide this attestation. 

5. ANNOUNCING ECA REPORT ISSUANCE VIA DOCUSIGN

We are pleased to announce that the Comparative Education Service has partnered with DocuSign to issue secure electronic copies of your ECA report. All ECA reports issued as of Tuesday, May 19 will benefit from enhanced security features. These include: cryptographically certified digital signatures, two-factor authentication by e-mail and phone for secure access and download, and a tamper-proof seal that attests to the integrity of its content. 

This is an additional measure we are implementing under these exceptional circumstances to make your experience with us smoother, simpler and more secure.

6. WEBINAR REMINDER: REGISTER TODAY!

On a final note, we would like to reiterate our invitation for you to join us for a one-hour webinar on CES processes, COVID-19 repercussions and solutions. Over 600 of you have already signed up. 

We are now offering three options with increased attendance capacity:

• Tuesday, May 19 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. EDT
• Wednesday, May 20 7 a.m. – 8 a.m. EDT
• Thursday, May 21 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. EDT

Please register here. Registration closes on Friday, May 15, at 9 a.m. and instructions to access the webinar will be sent to all registered attendees that same day. 

We look forward to being of service.
Sincerely,

Maia Korotkina, LL.M.
Manager

Dear CES Applicants,

As we embark upon the month of May, atypical in its uncertainty across communities, industries, and borders, we at the Comparative Education Service come to you once more with some updates and invitations.

ALTERNATIVE PROCEDURES AND YOUR APPLICATION

We would like to thank all of you who have reached out to us after last Tuesday’s e-mail. We are grateful for your kind, appreciative responses to our alternative authentication efforts and are doing our best to provide each of you with the specific answers you seek. 

Please rest assured that there is no obligation, nor expectation for you to explore these alternative options. Even though many institutions face closure or other restrictions to their activities, our team is pursuing digital options wherever available, and making efforts to contact those institutions that remain active in some capacity.

In all cases, once we regain access to our offices, we will review the physical documents sent to us by your institution(s) and continue to process your applications sequentially. Although processing has been paused/put on hold over the past six weeks for most applications due to the operational constraints of academic institutions, please know that we will regain full speed as soon as we are able to return to our premises. We will keep you informed of our progress and share every update provided by the Government of Ontario and the University of Toronto in the weeks ahead.

COMMUNICATIONS WITH IRCC AND OTHER INSTITUTIONAL STAKEHOLDERS

We remain in regular communication with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and other institutional stakeholders about the status of our operations and how this affects your academic, professional and immigration plans. 

As a result, for the time being, IRCC is allowing applicants to upload electronic ECA reports in place of scans of paper reports. You may therefore use the reference number and outcomes listed on the electronic ECA report you receive from us. We will issue you an official paper copy according to your chosen delivery method once our in-office operations resume.

WEBINAR INVITATION: REGISTER TODAY!

We are grateful to the hundreds of you who have filled out our CES Webinar Interest survey between April 28 and May 3, 2020. We have taken note of each of your inquiries and are delighted to offer the following two options:

• Tuesday, May 19 10 a.m. – 11 a.m.
• Wednesday, May 20 7 a.m. – 8 a.m.

Please register here. 

We will provide a more detailed look inside CES procedures, status updates, timeframes, challenges and alternative options during COVID-19 constraints, and information on how to access and use your electronic ECA report. Then, we will open the floor to a Question & Answer period in English, French, Tamil, and Urdu.

Until then, we wish you health, care and warmth, and remain at your service for any further support we may provide.

Au plaisir,

Maia Korotkina, LL.M.
Manager, Comparative Education Service

Dear CES Applicants,

We hope this message finds you and your loved ones well, in both health and spirit.

It has already been a month since we at the Comparative Education Service (CES), last reached out to inform you of the repercussions of COVID-19 on our operations and what we are doing to continue providing services to you. We would like to take this opportunity to give you some more updates. 

We appreciate how challenging the situation has been for our clients and thank you for your supportive responses to the alternative measures we are using to move forward with your respective files. Thanks to these measures, we continue to issue over 1,000 ECA reports every month. We are continuing to seek additional ways of accelerating and facilitating processes for thousands more people like yourself, who are eagerly anticipating their results. 

COVID-19 IMPACT AND THE SOLUTIONS WE HAVE IMPLEMENTED

Please find below a diagram showing the application process, including special measures we have implemented to address challenges caused by COVID-19: 

Review Stage (#2-4 above): Digital Academic Records and Verification Mechanisms

• Directly from your institution: We encourage you to request that official copies of your academic records be submitted to us electronically via established, secure inter-institutional portals or sent to ces.transcripts@utoronto.ca, even if we have already received physical copies of your transcripts in our offices;
• Online verification: We are able to use alternative verification resources in cases when your issuing institution does not have such established practices, such as public registries of graduates and/or diplomas or other digital repositories of student records made available by the competent authorities in your country(ies) of education;
• E-mail from CES to your institution: We initiate direct inter-institutional verification procedures with your academic institution(s) via e-mail.

Final Stage (#6 above): Electronic Issuance and Dispatch of ECA Reports

• We are pleased to issue your ECA Report electronically, to be followed by a paper copy once our in-office operations are allowed to resume. IRCC and any other third parties that will receive your report are aware of their identical content and are receptive to this temporary measure. We are also implementing an additional, innovative solution to the secure electronic issuance and dispatch of your ECA Report, which we expect to launch in mid-May. Please stay tuned!

Our Commitment towards Client Support

We have committed additional resources toward proactive accommodating solutions that take your individual circumstances into account and devote all means at our disposal to be of better service. Please reach out to our team by phone or by e-mail for any inquiries or clarifications about your particular file.

Communications with IRCC and other Institutional Stakeholders

• We are in proactive, regular communication with Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, other governmental, academic and professional stakeholders, and our peer organizations within the Alliance of Credential Evaluation Services of Canada. This ensures our coordination on processing timeframes and extensions, formalized alternative measures, and the electronic issuance and dispatch of your credential assessment reports. 

At times, employing these measures can be more time-consuming, but we remain as committed as ever to ensuring our high standards of accessibility, quality, genuine care, and accountability – values you have come to expect from the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies’ Comparative Education Service.

As always, please monitor your inbox for upcoming notifications and check our Help Centre article dedicated to CES Updates & FAQs regarding COVID-19 for up-to-date information on the way forward.

INVITATION: JOIN US FOR A WEBINAR IN MAY

In a time of physical distancing, we wanted to find a way to help you feel more connected to us.  It is therefore with great enthusiasm that we would like to present you with an invitation: 

Over the next month, we will be offering a series of live, hour-long webinars to explain in more detail:

• What we do at CES as standard procedure
• Which processing stages are affected most by COVID-19
• What our team is doing to mitigate inconveniences and delays
• What you, in turn, can do to help

If you are interested in participating in such a webinar, please click here to fill out a survey with 

a) Your preferred timeslot(s);
b) Any questions or topics you wish to have addressed, and;
c) Language options (if applicable). 

We kindly ask you to please fill out this survey by Sunday, May 3rd.  This will allow us to compile your responses and send you a follow-up e-mail with registration options on Monday, May 4, 2020.  We hope that this new method of communicating and sharing information with you will help alleviate some of the worries that you have around the application process, especially given the changes that have resulted from COVID-19.

Once again, we thank you for the trust you have placed in the Comparative Education Service and look forward to connecting with you as we make progress on your application.

Warm regards,

Maia Korotkina, LL.M.
Manager, Comparative Education Service

Dear CES Applicants,

As a part of the widespread social distancing measures happening across Canada due to COVID-19, and in alignment with provincial recommendations and the University of Toronto policy, please note that the Comparative Education Service has temporarily suspended all in-office operations effective March 18, 2020. 

As we support our clients in these difficult times, we would like to reassure you of our commitment toward quality, care, transparency, and accountability, and our utmost efforts toward minimizing the inconveniences caused.

We continue to welcome, process and conduct communications on credential assessment applications, including physical documents received by our offices up to March 12-13, 2020.
However, as a consequence of the closure of our physical premises, mail intake, physical document authentication, and all pick-up and delivery services are suspended. We regret the processing delays that result from these constraints and thank you for your patience as we navigate these uncharted waters. Please rest assured that our team remains available to answer any questions you may have as to the progress of your file. We invite you to check your inbox and our website for regular updates.

We appreciate these are difficult times. Once again and always, we thank you for entrusting us with your educational credential assessment and thus allowing us to be of service in your professional, academic, and/or immigration endeavors.
 
Sincerely,

Maia Korotkina, LL.M.
Manager, Comparative Education Service