PASI Credential Overview

A Credential is a printed document that a student works towards through a school within their high school years. Once the student becomes eligible for a high school credential, it is awarded to the student by Alberta Education resulting in the student receiving a printed document acknowledging their achievements. Another word for a credential is “diploma” or “certificate”.

PASI tracks information regarding two different types of “Credentials”:

Credential - Alberta Education Awarded (The focus of this overview page).
External Credential - Alberta Education “Acknowledged”/“Supported”
- For more information on the External Credentials, refer to the Dual Credit Opportunity Overview

Defining Credentials

A list of Credential Types that have been or are currently awarded by Alberta Education is as follows:

The individual requirements that the student must meet to be awarded with a credential are outlined in the current https://education.alberta.ca/guide-to-education/the-guide-to-education/everyone/the-guide-to-education/.

Credentials follow the following structure.

See PASI Credential Management Details for more information about adding/modifying/deleting credential definitions moving forward. This includes:

Adding a new Credential Requirement Set to a Credential.
Implementing new Credential Requirement that will become effective as of a certain timeframe.
End-dating old requirements.

Achieving Credentials

How Does A Student Get a Credential?

Option A: The student completes their school work, schools submit school marks and diploma exam marks are received by Alberta Education. From these, Official Marks are calculated which get considered in the calculation towards credential eligibility.

Option B: The student requests a High School Equivalency Diploma - Alternate 1 to the School or a Ministry user and that user completes the application process in PASIprep: Application for High School Equivalency Diploma - Alternative 1.

Where a student has met all requirements to achieve a credential, Alberta Education will consider awarding that student with the credential that they have achieved.

As the student completes their high school work and meets at least the minimum requirements for a credential, PASI assesses the student's progress towards each credential.

The Transcript Processor runs when data that would impact the student's credential eligibility or transcript data has changed in any way.
The transcript processor functionality includes a Credential Eligibility Calculator.
The student's credential requirements also get re-assessed as needed by the Student Credential Requirement Processor. This is important because the credential requirement status is used by the Credential Eligibility Calculator to determine the student's overall credential eligibility.

For each student, Alberta Education maintains records in PASI of the Student's progress towards the Credentials that apply to them. The following student data is calculated and stored:

A record of each Student Credential that a student is working towards.
A record of each Student Credential Requirement Set for those Credentials that the student is working towards or has achieved.
A record for each Student Credential Requirements

As a student is working towards their credential, their progress can be tracked by Student, Public and Admin myPass users using:

Available From	Screen	Student	Public	Admin
myPass	View Credentials	Y	Y	Y
	View Document Order History¹⁾	Y	Y	Y
	Credential Requirement Checklist (PDF)	Y	Y	Y

The student credential progress may also be monitored by School and Ministry users via PASIprep using:

Available From	Screen	Ministry	School/School Authorities
PASIprep	View Student - Credentials Tab	Y	Y
	View High School Credential Requirements	Y	Y
	View Awarded Credential	Y	Y
	Credential Requirement Checklist (PDF)	Y	Y

Credential-Related Statuses

Credentials have multiple layers of “statuses” across the various levels of credential details:

Credential - a credential is either awarded or not.
Credential Requirement Set - credential requirement set achieved status
Credential Requirement - credential requirement status

For a summary of how the various credential statuses are reflected across the PASI screens and documents, refer to PASI Credential Status Overview.

The Student Credential Requirements must all be met (with can be done by achieving the requirement via their school record OR by receiving approval to be exempt from a requirement) for at least one Student Credential Requirement Set related to a credential for the student to be eligible to be awarded the credential (also referred to as “achieved” the credential).

Requirements Achievement

Each Credential Requirement has been implemented in 1 of 2 ways:

A system-calculated achievement
1. Each Credential Type has a set of requirements and many of those requirements are met when the certain coursework has been complete.
2. View the Credential Requirement Course Mapping for more details.
3. In the case of system-calculated credential requirements, PASI will determine if these credentials are achieved or not and update the status accordingly.
A manual assessment of achievement

Requirements Exemption

Credential requirements may be exempted where a School or Ministry user chooses to remove the requirement to meet a particular requirement via an Exemption Reasons. An exemption will be of one of the following types.

The user may request and approve a Student Credential Requirement Exemption via the the Edit Credential Requirement Exemption PASIprep screen.

Access to request or approve exemptions is complex in that there are multiple checks that occur. Certain Exemption Reason types are available based on the user's permissions and the credential requirement itself.

Only certain exemption types are available for each credential requirement, as defined within the PASI CredentialRequirementExemption database table.
Only users with the PASIprep Level 16 Permission - Submit SCR Exemption Request may request exemptions.
Only users with the PASIprep Level 17 Permission - Approve SCR Exemption Request may approve exemptions.

Awarding Credentials

Award Credential Number

Once a student has achieved all credential requirements for at least 1 credential requirement set of a credential, Student Records awards the credential to the student. They can do this from PASIprep as a:

Single award for an individual student using Award and Order Credential or
Bulk award using Award and Order Credentials in Bulk for multiple students at a time.

Awarding the credential to the student generates a unique Credential Number and stores the student's awarding information that will be printed on the resulting printed credential. This information is stored by Alberta Education in an Awarded Student Credential record, representing the awarded credential information for the student.

To generate a printed credential, the awarded credential must be ordered. Student Records may choose not to order the credential at the time of awarding and may order from the View Awarded Credential screen at a later date and time.

Re-Issuing A Credential Number

Where a credential has been awarded to the student and a piece of data ²⁾ must be updated on the printed credential, the Student Records user may Re-Issue the credential to the student using the PASIprep Edit Awarded Credential screen.

Re-issuing occurs where the student's name and/or school year is updated on an Credential Number (Awarded Student Credential) record. This generates a new credential number and captures new “point in time” awarding information for that student(which will be included on the Printed Credential Document). This instance of the awarded credential becomes the Active Credential Number for that student.

Much like the initial awarding, re-issuing a credential must be followed by ordering to get the Printed Credential Document to the student, but this is an optional step that may be completed at a later date and time.

Receiving Printed Credentials

Refer to the Document Orders Overview for details on ordering, processing and delivery of a credential.

Specific to credentials, the Credential content is printed on the Alberta Education approved Credential paper, which has multiple security features built into the paper such as:

Microprint text
Watermark of the Alberta Government logo
Security feature descriptions on the back of the paper

Miscellaneous

Terminology

Business Objects

The following are the credential definition business objects:

The following are the student credential business objects:

Business Processes

Services

Processor

PASIprep Functionality

myPass Functionality

Documents

Credential, Concept

¹⁾

This screen provides the student with the ability to see all credential orders along with their other document orders.

²⁾

E.g., the student's has completed a legal name change and has requested their new name to be on their Credential or the awarded school year requires correction

PASI Knowledge Base

Table of Contents