Award Documents and Academic Verifications

If you have studied one of the awards listed in the Awards of the University you will have access to the following documents:

• Award Certificate
• Letter of verification
• End of course transcript* (only available for students who graduated from 1 September 1999 onwards)
• Diploma supplement* (only available for students who graduated from 1 September 2006 onwards)

* Not available for MPhil, PhD and Professional Doctorate students

Students who graduated prior to 1 June 2025 will have their certificate and end of course transcript posted to the address held on their student record as follows:

• Prior to 3 March 2025 documents will be sent to the correspondence address
• From 3 March 2025 documents will be sent to the home address

From 3 March 2025, your e-documents will be published on the University of Portsmouth Awards and Verification Portal within a few days of the Board of Examiners taking place.

Your award documents will be printed with your full name as shown on your Student View. As these are legal documents we are unable to print them with preferred names. You will receive an email approximately a month before you are due to finish your course showing you what will be printed on your documents. If this is incorrect you need to send a copy of your passport to myport@port.ac.uk.

Like your Birth Certificate, school and other certificates are usually considered to be a “matter of fact”; as long as they were correct at the time they were issued, they will not generally be updated with your new name. If you need to show your certificates to someone and the name is different, you simply show your Birth Certificate, or some other evidence of your previous name, at the same time. 

If you spot a spelling or administrative error when you view your e-documents, you should “Report an issue” via the Awards and Verification portal and select “Incorrect name (spelling mistake)” or “Incorrect name (name duplicated/missing).

In circumstances where an individual has corrected their name as a result of gender reassignment, and the individual asks the University to reissue a degree certificate showing this name, this request will be granted free of charge upon production of proof of name

When you complete your degree, you'll receive your award documents confirming your degree and classification. This is made up of an award certificate (parchment) and where applicable, a transcript listing the modules you passed during your studies, and the mark and credit level for each module.

Your award certificate is a coloured certificate showing your name, award title, classification and date of the award. Award classifications include first, upper second, lower second and third for Bachelor's degrees and merit and distinction for Postgraduate courses. 

Award certificates are printed on watermarked parchment paper with the University crest, and are signed by the Vice-Chancellor and Academic Registrar. 

Your transcript lists the modules you passed during your studies, and the mark and credit level for each module. 

Diploma Supplements are available for all undergraduates and postgraduate taught students who completed their course after 2006.

If you completed your course from 3 March 2025 onwards, you will be able to view and share your Diploma Supplement using the University of Portsmouth Awards and Verification Portal.

If you completed your course between 2006 and 3 March 2025 you will need to email awards@port.ac.uk and a pdf version will be emailed to you.

The best way to prevent document fraud is to share your e-documents via the secure University of Portsmouth Awards and Verification Portal. This provides third parties with a secure method to check your qualifications for a small fee. 

In addition, we print your documents on specialist paper. More information about the security features of your award documents can be found here.

Certificate paper  Transcript paper

We will not charge you for your original award documents. Until 31 May 2025 these will automatically be sent to you. 

From 1 June 2025 you can order the documents through our Awards and Verification Portal and choose whether to collect them (for free) or have them delivered to an address of your choice (postage is an additional fee). 

Your e-documents will be published free of charge to the University of Portsmouth Awards and Verification Portal. If you would like a printed copy you can request the first copy free of charge via the University of Portsmouth Awards and Verification Portal (postage is an additional fee).

If you have lost your original documents you will have to purchase a replacement copy. The way in which you do this depends on when you completed your course.

If you receive your results prior to 31 May 2025, your documents will be printed and posted to you automatically. It can take up to two weeks for documents to be delivered in the UK and 6-8 weeks for international addresses. If your documents haven’t arrived after this time, please email awards@port.ac.uk with your student number and we can investigate for you.

If it is over six months since your award documents were sent to you and you have not made contact with us, you will have to pay for a replacement set.

If you didn’t update your address before your documents were sent out and they got lost, you will have to pay for a replacement set.

Once you have received your results, your documents will be printed and posted as follows:

• Prior to 10 March 2025, documents will be sent to the correspondence address
• From 10 March 2025, documents will be sent to the home address

If you don’t update your address before your results are published, it is possible your documents will get lost. If you haven’t updated your address, and your documents get lost, you will have to pay for a new set. Replacement certificates cost £40 and replacement transcripts cost £20.

You are permitted to have one copy of your award documents in your possession at any one time; multiple copies cannot be requested. Once a new copy of your award documents are printed, previous copies are rendered invalid. 

If you were awarded after 3 March 2025, you can share your award documents with third parties through the new Awards and Verification Portal.

If you were awarded before 3 March 2025, we are able to provide certified true copies via the Online Store. 

Once you have received your results, your documents will be printed and posted to your address. It can take up to two weeks for documents to be delivered in the UK and 6-8 weeks for international addresses. 

From 1 June 2025, your documents will be published to the University of Portsmouth Awards and Verification Portal where you can view and share them. 

They will not be printed automatically. 

If you wish to receive a printed copy, you can order this on the portal. It can take up to two weeks for documents to be delivered in the UK and 6-8 weeks for international addresses. It may take longer during peak periods (July and November). If your documents haven’t arrived after this time, please email awards@port.ac.uk with your student number and we can investigate for you.

Depending on when you studied with us, will depend what documents we are able to provide and where you order them from. The table below shows how to go about ordering replacements: 

Replacement certificates cost £40 and replacement transcripts cost £20. The delivery cost will vary depending which method you choose and where you live. 

* We are unable to provide replacement transcripts for graduates who completed their studies between 1992 and 1999 as the University did not retain module marks prior to this date.  

We aim to process your request in 10-15 working days; however at peak times (July and November) this may take longer.

Your entitlement to attend graduation depends on your course of study and your eligibility to attend is based on your academic achievement. Details on eligibility can be found here.

In general, if you are studying a course at the University of Portsmouth, either in Portsmouth, distance learning or at our London campus that has one of the following award designations, you should be entitled to attend a graduation ceremony:

• A Bachelor’s Ordinary Degree or a Degree with Honours, of Arts (BA), Science (BSc), Engineering (BEng), Law (LLB), Nursing (BN) or Economics (BSc Econ);
• A Master’s or an Integrated Master’s degree 
• A CertEd, CertHE, HNC or HND
• A DipHE
• A FdA or FdEng
• A PGCert, PGCE, GradDip or PGDip
• MPhil or PhD 

In some cases, if you are studying at one of our partner institutions you may also be entitled to attend a University of Portsmouth graduation ceremony. You should check with your home institution first. 

For any other queries about whether your course of study entitles you to attend a graduation ceremony or about academic eligibility, please contact the MyPort Information Hub at myport@port.ac.uk 

Unfortunately, the University cannot provide this service for you. You will need to appoint an independent solicitor to legalise the document on your behalf. 

Details on how to do this can be found on the Foreign and Commonwealth website. 

Visit the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website

There are a number of options as to how you can prove your qualifications are genuine to a third party:

• Letter of verification - details of your qualification, registration period, mode of study and delivery, location of delivery and language of assessment. Digital copies free, printed copies £12 plus postage.
• Certified copies - you must provide your original documents or purchase a replacement for this service. We will stamp and sign a copy of your documents to confirm they are genuine and send this as a locked pdf to share. £10 per document.

• SmartVerify+ QR code - you can use a mobile device to scan the SmartVerify+ QR code on the front of your award documents to confirm their authenticity.
• Third party connection - give permission for them to log in and view your qualification to verify its authenticity via the Awards and Verification Portal

We aim to process your request in 10-15 working days; however, at peak times (July and November) this may take longer.

Depending on when you studied with us, will depend which services are available and how you request this. The table below shows what services are available:

If you're looking for a personal or character reference from an academic, you'll need to contact the faculty you studied under to see whether this can be arranged. Please email myport@port.ac.uk to request this.

Some companies, educational institutions or government authorities may require you to supply certified award documents.

We are able to certify documents for graduates who were awarded after 1 September 1992 when the University received its awarding powers. Please place your order through our online store.

You will need to send a scanned copy of your original award certificate/transcript as required, this will be stamped, signed and emailed back to you as a pdf. If you need it to be sent to a third party, please include their contact details in your order. If you don’t have your original documents, you will need to purchase a replacement set and then add a certified copy to your order. 

We aim to process your request in 10-15 working days; however at peak times (July and November) this may take longer. This service costs £10 per document.

If you studied at Portsmouth Polytechnic (CNAA) between 1969 and 1992 you will need to contact the Open University Validation Service who will provide a proforma certificate. 

If you graduated prior to 1969, please email awards@port.ac.uk to check that we are able to fulfil your request before placing your order.

If you are a third party requesting verification for a University of Portsmouth award, this is managed by Prospects Hedd online verification service.  There is a small charge per enquiry. 

Prospects Hedd is managed by Jisc and has been providing a secure verification service for employers, screening agencies, embassies, councils and other institutions for over nine years. Verification requests through Prospects Hedd can be made to over 125 UK Higher Education Institutions.

How to register

To make an enquiry you need to register with Prospects Hedd by visiting www.hedd.ac.uk. 

• Select ‘University of Portsmouth’ from the list of UK higher education institutions and choose the option to 'verify a degree award'. 
• You will also be required to upload a hand-signed consent form. Please ensure you adhere to the specific consent requirements before submitting your request as this will result in a delay to your request being actioned. Our consent form template can be found here.

Submitting an enquiry

You’ll need the individual’s name, date of birth, course, qualification, year of graduation and degree result. Dates of attendance will be given alongside the verification response.

To ensure your verification is submitted correctly, and to receive a quick response, we recommend you input the data as per the degree certificate or ask the individual to give you their data as they believe it's recorded in the student records system or at the time of study. The enquiry will then come to us for verification, with a 15 working day turnaround time. 

Help

If you have any problems or queries, please email heddhelp@prospects.ac.uk

World Education Services (WES) offer a credential evaluation service and you can find more information about the required documents here.

We aim to process your request in 10-15 working days; however at peak times (July and November) this may take longer. This service costs £10 per document. Please place your order through our online store, along with your WES reference number. Once we receive your documents we'll check your award and stamp and certify the copy before we upload it to the secure WES portal (please see the diagram below for how this works).