School and principal stamps: the five marks a school actually uses
28 August 2026 ยท Estamplab
A school runs on stamps more than most offices do, and almost none of them are the school's crest. They are the marks that say a transcript is genuine, that a leaving certificate was checked against the original, that a fee slip was received on the day the parent says it was. This is what each one carries, and how to make them.
The stamps a school actually uses
The head teacher's stamp. The name, the title, and the school. This is the mark that goes on a recommendation, a transfer letter or a testimonial, and it is the one an admissions office or an employer looks for. There is a school principal stamp maker for exactly this layout.
The school's own seal. The registered name of the school around the ring, often the year of establishment and the town. Closer to a company seal than to an office stamp, and used on certificates and formal correspondence. A round seal is the conventional shape.
The certified true copy stamp. The workhorse, and the one that gets used most. Every birth certificate, every previous transcript, every identity document a parent brings in as an original and needs to leave as an accepted copy. It needs a date on every impression and a line for the person who did the checking.
The received and date stamp. For the front office: fee slips, applications, letters from the ministry. When something arrived is the entire argument in a fee dispute or a late application, so the date has to be right rather than approximately right.
The examinations or records stamp. For marking a script, a result slip or a record as processed.
A general school stamp covers the first two for a small school; a larger one wants them separate, because the head's personal mark and the institution's seal are not the same authority.
Choose another template in the stamp maker
What belongs on a head teacher's stamp
Three lines, and the order is the convention:
- The name and title. THE HEAD TEACHER, or the head's own name with the title beneath it. Both are used; the impersonal version survives a change of head, which is worth something.
- The school's registered name, as it is registered, not as it is abbreviated locally.
- The date, and this one should be a blank to write on rather than a printed date. A head's stamp is pressed every week for years, and a printed date is wrong on every document after the day the file was made.
A signature rule under the name is common and useful: it gives the head somewhere to sign so the stamp and the signature sit together rather than fighting for the same space.
Making one
- Open the stamp maker and choose a shape. A rectangle holds three or four straight lines and reads fast, which is what an office stamp needs. A circle suits the school seal.
- Type the wording. On a circle the ring text curves and re-fits itself when the school's name changes length, which is the part that makes a Word template miserable.
- Add the date as a blank, so it is written in each time.
- Add the school badge if there is one. Turning a badge into a stamp removes the white background so it lands as ink instead of a white square over the paper.
- Preview at full size, then download.
Putting it on documents
Most school paperwork is Word or PDF long before it is paper. The Word download arrives already set to float over the text, which is the setting that stops a stamp shoving the rest of a transfer letter down the page. For a PDF, you can put the stamp straight onto the file.
For anything printed and signed by hand, take the transparent PNG so the paper shows through the ink. Which format does what is set out in the file formats page.
The honest limits
A school stamp records that a document came from the school. It is not proof of who applied it, and it does not make a transcript verifiable on its own. Institutions that need to verify a document properly do it by contacting the school, and that is the right process rather than a failure of the stamp.
Rules on what a school may certify, and on who may certify a copy of an official document, differ by country and sometimes by county or district. Check what applies where the school is registered.
Read next: how to make a digital stamp, and the problems with physical stamps, including what happens the week the only stamp in the school goes missing.