Higher qualifications

Higher qualifications reflect the latest research and thinking on key topics and conditions, enabling you to provide the highest standards of patient care. They cover five essential subject areas:

• Contact lens practice – enabling you to select and fit contact lenses for common eye conditions, and more complex contact lenses for refractive management, ocular surface abnormalities and disease.
• Glaucoma - enabling you to manage glaucoma and related conditions effectively, and participate in glaucoma clinics at varying levels of responsibility.
• Low vision - developing your skills in patient assessment and management and helping you to progress to more complex low vision cases and specialist populations 
• Medical retina - preparing you for working in photography-based diabetic retinopathy screening services and/or working under supervision in medical retina triage clinics and AMD treatment clinics. Candidates completing the Professional Certificate will be automatically exempt from the majority of the NHS England DESP training.
• Paediatric eye care - helping you to adapt your routine to meet the specific needs of younger patients in a hospital or community setting.

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