A new website at www.echoe.org claims to be from a new "European Council for Home and Online Education" which seeks to "represent all privately-owned and non-governmental European organizations offering high quality and educationally sound distance learning".

ODL QC has been unable to obtain independent confirmation of the validity of this organisation.

In particular, a significant number of providers accredited by ODL QC are included in page headed "Member Institutions".    We contacted some of these providers on or around 20th January.    From their responses it was clear that none had heard of ECHOE.    None had had any contact with it, prior to our enquiry.    None had joined ECHOE, or been invited to join, or wished to be members of ECHOE.    Several of these providers have now asked ECHOE to remove their names from this list of members, but at the time of writing this has not been done; most have received no more than an automated response to their email request    (The website gives no information on how to become a member of ECHOE).

The list of members includes several organisations with names which sound like UK Universities, but whose degrees are not recognised by the UK authorities.    The DfES website has definitive information of UK recognised degrees and who can offer them.

The website also states that membership offers "Discounts on fees for ECHOE Conferences and Conferences of organization ECHOE has set up partnerships with, such as the Distance Education and Training Council in the US."    In response to our query to DETC in the US, the DETC claimed no knowledge of any such partnership.

As for the list of benfits in general, those offered by this body use almost identical words to those offered by the well-known and long standing European Association for Distance Learning (EADL).   This is not acknowledged on the ECHOE website.

Under the circumstances, we would advise anyone seeking to deal with ECHOE, or to accept any recommendation from it or its website, to seek independent guidance before proceeding further.