Restoration of educational documents

What documents can be restored and what is the procedure?

According to current legislation, virtually any document can be restored. For example, the most common requests for restoration include:

1. certificates of completion of basic secondary education;
2. certificates of completion of complete general secondary education (in simpler terms, in both cases we are talking about school certificates for completing grades 9 or 11);
3. bachelor’s or master’s diploma;
4. doctor of science diploma;
5. certificates of acquisition (advanced) of work qualifications, etc.

If you’ve lost the documents listed above, don’t worry. Restoring them is entirely possible. And with professional legal assistance, it’s even easier than trying to do it yourself.

What requirements must an application for restoration of an educational document meet?

Such a statement must include the following information:

• the last name, first name, and patronymic of the person in whose name the document was issued;
• the applicant’s place of residence;
• their telephone number;
• the name of the educational institution and the year of graduation;
• the name of the document that was lost or damaged;
• the reason for the loss or damage of the document;
• other information that the applicant considers essential for obtaining a duplicate.

Ideally, you should know at least the document’s series and number. If you have this information, restoring it will be much easier, as the time spent searching for information about such a document can be significantly reduced.

How does the document recovery procedure work?

A duplicate document can be ordered through the Unified State Electronic Database on Education Issues (USEDE). This information system contains data on documents issued since 2000.

For those who received their educational document earlier, its restoration is also possible, but the procedure is more complex. For documents for which there is no data in USEDE, a duplicate can be ordered using other information. For example, this could be an archival extract.

When an archival extract is required, legal support is especially helpful. An migration lawyer can submit a legal request to the archival institution. Their representatives are obligated to respond to such a request within a relatively short time. Therefore, this significantly speeds up the document restoration process.

It’s worth noting that specialist support makes it much easier to go to court to establish the legal status of your education. You can delegate all necessary legal actions and know that these processes are under reliable supervision and control.

If the educational institution where you studied has ceased operations, the application should be addressed to its legal successor.

A particularly common question about restoring educational documents concerns cases where the certificate or diploma was issued by an educational institution currently located in occupied territory. Indeed, a significant number of people lost their documents when leaving the occupied territories. Now, as they begin their lives in a new place, they need documents confirming their qualifications and the specialty they acquired.

What to do if your educational institution is located in an occupied territory?

If you need to restore a diploma obtained in the territory of Crimea or Donbass, which is not under Ukrainian control, before 2000, you must proceed as follows:

• for those educated in Crimea, a procedure is in place whereby they must immediately submit a written application to the Ministry of Education and Science to determine the institution that will issue the duplicate;
• for those educated in Donbas, a written application must be submitted to the institution’s legal successor. It may also be appropriate to apply directly to the institution itself, which applies to educational institutions that have been relocated. Otherwise, an application to the Ministry of Education and Science is required to determine the educational institution responsible for issuing the document.

So, as can be seen from this procedure, the current location of the educational institution in the occupied territory does not at all mean that the recipient of the education will be left without a duplicate document.

Is it possible to restore documents remotely?

These questions are particularly common in cases where the applicant is abroad. Remote document restoration is possible. You should first issue a power of attorney to the person who will represent you in this process—for example, your migration lawyer.

It’s also worth noting: if you plan to use educational documents abroad, they must be legalized. For example, if the country where you currently reside is a party to the Hague Convention, an apostille will suffice. This is a 10 x 10 centimeter stamp that contains key information about the document.

Regarding the apostille, it’s important to know this: the educational document and its appendix are affixed separately. Therefore, pay attention to this to avoid problems using the document later.

If you want to restore lost documents and don’t know where to start, contact us for an initial consultation. You can also order a turnkey document restoration service from us. Simplify your document recovery process by entrusting legal support to professionals.

If you need to recover lost documents and don’t know where to start, contact us for an initial consultation or order a turnkey document recovery service. Contact a lawyer using the number on the card or fill out the form on the website, and a lawyer will call you.