Am I Qualified?

I’ve just spent sometime on Yahoo Answers writing some very dull stuff indeed. It seems there are quite a few people out there who are lost in the qualifications jungle and I have been making misguided attempts to write something helpful in response.

The confusion is hardly surprising really: we have GCSEs (would Sir/Madam prefer a short course, single award or double award?) and GCSE AS and A2 (aka A Level). There are still plenty of people who can claim O Levels, CSEs, GNVQ or VCE awards. Something vocational? Try an NVQ or a nice BTEC Diploma. Or you may prefer a nice ICT qualification: how about ECDL, MOS User, DiDA, AiDA, CiDA or CiDA+? Or perhaps you would like something skills based – how about Key Skills, ASDAN or COPE? I could go on…

I work in education and I can’t keep up with it all, so it shouldn’t have surprised me when one of my search feeds turned up a question from someone who didn’t know what their own qualifications were “worth”. If you are reduced to asking the audience what the value of your own qualifications is, then sadly I guess the real answer is “Not much.”