MIE
Monday, 15 February 2010
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The use of credentials verification technology and services is beginning to gain prominence in the education field as the need to recruit the services of qualified teachers with proven track records and complete references grows.
Ina Van der Merwe, CEO at Managed Integrity Evaluation (MIE) a subsidiary of the Ideco Group and an established verification provider in South Africa, says decision makers are focused on a number of key aspects to improve recruitment in education.
These aspects include ID verification, qualification verifications, criminal record checks and reference checks.
“It makes sense that those tasked with the recruitment of educators want to use verification systems to ensure that would-be employees are exactly who they say they are” says Van der Merwe.
“Institutions established to teach communities can ill-afford to fall victim to any form of fraud or manipulation of information.”
While identity verification is a starting point and covers standard identification book cross check and confirmation, Van der Merwe explains it is the qualifications verifications process that is of particular importance in this area of business.
“For obvious reasons you do not want to put an unqualified teacher into a classroom full of children,” she says.
“Additionally, the employer can request that the candidate supplies copies of the transcripts of his/her syllabus in order to be certain that whatever it is that the candidate qualified in is congruent to what they are claiming on their CV.”
As is the case with credentials verifications services across any industry or sector, the rights of the individual also have to be respected, Van der Merwe points out.
“It is absolutely essential that the rights of people are taken into consideration and complied with in terms of credentials verification,” she says. “At the same time, it is necessary to put in place reference checks to confirm important information and also provide the employer with insight into the personality of the candidate, traits, strengths, weaknesses and how they are likely to operate within the environment.”
