Surname

No? People can be called whatever they want. Only thing for the learner to bear in mind is what it will say on their certificate at the end of the course and how that might look in the future.

In principal, I agree with Steve. In reality, it can cause real problems. The LRS guidance we agree to specifically says it should be legal name. The awarding bodies we work with also say that we must have seen ID in the name we give to them. We don't accept GCSE certs/statements of results, because schools let them use whatever surname they like. If we issue certs in a name they have no ID for, we may be doing them a disservice when a university or employer refuses to accept that they belong to them (which would be totally fair).

We've got a whole policy on this now. Basically, we ask all students using a different name to either get a deed poll (only available for 18+ or parents can apply for under 18s) or complete an "unenrolled" deed poll. The unenrolled one is available to anyone 16+ and is free, you just print it yourself (useful website here)! We ask that it's signed by two unrelated adults. Those are accepted by the passport office and the DVLA, though it took us the longest time to get awarding bodies to accept them too. We also get them to complete a name change form alongside the deed poll or other ID they've supplied, so we can make sure they understand all the implications. We have about 6 of us in college who know all this stuff well, and can chat through the options with a student. It's the same for forename or surname. We have a small exception for surname:

On rare occasions, we may allow a student to use a different Surname if:

• They recently used their preferred surname at school.
• The originally applied/enrolled with us using their preferred surname.
• There are circumstances which mean they cannot legally change their surname because this could cause harm or distress.

We literally can't change their surname without ID or deed poll if we've already registered them with an awarding body, they would just refuse to do it.

We don't allow students to use a forename with don't have ID or a deed poll for, but that's because we use "Known As" for most things in college. One thing we just cannot facilitate, is a student who wants to change their forename by deed poll and get certs in that name, but for us to send letters home or email to parents using their previous name. Once we've changed the forename for the ILR, that's done and we don't store their previous name.

Thank you both.