Higher qualifications

Higher qualifications are suitable for optometrists at all stages of their careers and in all settings. There are three levels:

• Professional Certificate - boosting your confidence and skills, and enabling you to get  more involved in community schemes.
• Professional Higher Certificate - enabling you to participate in community or hospital-based schemes involving the diagnosis, treatment and management of conditions such as glaucoma, or work in a consultant ophthalmologist-led medical retina service.
• Professional Diploma - designed for optometrists working in hospital clinics, or for community practitioners looking to offer commissioned services or run specialist clinics.

Higher qualification courses are developed and delivered by universities and hospitals and accredited by the College of Optometrists. They are delivered via a flexible combination of distance learning, coursework, assessments and practical sessions and, at higher levels, a portfolio of clinical experience.

When you have successfully completed your qualification, your course provider will ratify the results (this can take some months) before sending them to the College. On receiving results, the College will update its records and advise the GOC so GOC staff can update its register. 

Certificates are issued free of charge only for full UK College members. 

If you complete a higher qualifications course while still a student registrant you will not receive a certificate until you join the College as a newly qualified practising optometrist (qualifying in the UK) or a full UK member with full (01-) GOC registration. You will have until the next (first) OSCE date following your own OSCE sitting to join the College or you will not receive a certificate. The dates of all upcoming OSCE dates are on our website. 

The College produces and prints certificates at regular intervals in the year. This means it may be some months before you receive a certificate, as the College must first receive the result and then include it in the next applicable print run. 

The College will invite full UK College members who complete a higher qualification at Higher Certificate or Diploma level to the College’s prestigious annual Diploma Ceremony to have their achievement officially recognised. The College will contact these course completers separately. 

The College will replace lost or damaged certificates for a fee of £30 to those who completed the course at a time when they were a full UK College member. Use the contact form to let us know if you require a replacement certificate.

• Higher qualifications certificate policy