“Apostilles are used to legalise documents for use overseas. The apostille certificate confirms the document has been signed, sealed or stamped correctly”. This process has to be completed in order that my qualifications are recognised by the government of Qatar.

This entails getting all relevant education certificates, that is the ones I listed on my application, verified as genuine. For this I must employ a Notary who will check and if OK, stamp and sign the certificates as genuine and charge a generous fee.

An ACRO Police Certificate is also needed. I went for the cheap £35 10-day option but in hindsight I should have paid an additional £35 and got the 2-day turnaround. 

The next stage in the process will be to send the documents along with the Police  and marriage certificates to the Legalisation Office at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They currently charge £30 to ‘legalise’ each document. Worth checking out the web page linked above which has underlines for headers in the right column.

And then everything goes to the Embassy of Qatar in London… hopefully I will get this completed in the next two weeks.