Unless you are going into higher education (i.e. uni), A levels really won't help you in applying for jobs. None that I have seen anyway. Most professional positions either need a degree, or a field specific certification.
6th form for the smart and college for thick people ?
- Thread starter Robbod
- Start date
It all depends on what you want to do. All these politicians who get caught out on scandals must be dumb as bricks but look, they went to private schools.
If you're a bell, you are a bell. Doesn't matter where you learned your they're there and their from your hypotenuse or atomic structure of Helium.
Street smarts and being savvy lead to success, not paper qualifications. Likewise with jobs, more likely to be hired if you have a track record of experience vs having multiple degrees and such.
Plus you can go back and qualify in a new discipline later in life. We no longer live in the 20th century where whatever you learn in is your field for most of your life.
I've worked in police digital forensics to global defence as well as running my own business - Don't have anything formal beyond AS levels...
Circling back now to it is whatever you want to do.
If you're a bell, you are a bell. Doesn't matter where you learned your they're there and their from your hypotenuse or atomic structure of Helium.
Street smarts and being savvy lead to success, not paper qualifications. Likewise with jobs, more likely to be hired if you have a track record of experience vs having multiple degrees and such.
Plus you can go back and qualify in a new discipline later in life. We no longer live in the 20th century where whatever you learn in is your field for most of your life.
I've worked in police digital forensics to global defence as well as running my own business - Don't have anything formal beyond AS levels...
Circling back now to it is whatever you want to do.
It's not, you should use "number of" where there are a specific number of distinct countable "things" (e.g. grammatical errors) whereas "amount of" is used for a quantity of a single entity (e.g. a mass of water).
General rule of thumb; if it's a plural then use "number" , otherwise use "amount".
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Both my kids are in a local Grammar school, 1 6th Form going through A levels, 1 doing GCSEs and who will also (hopefully) be going to 6th Form.
Had wifey's nephews girlfriend over at the weekend who works in a job centre in Sheffield and we all got talking about life after school. She pipes up not to bother staying on at school and those silly exam results, they won't help you get a job.
Had wifey's nephews girlfriend over at the weekend who works in a job centre in Sheffield and we all got talking about life after school. She pipes up not to bother staying on at school and those silly exam results, they won't help you get a job.
Aside from basic maths and English I've put pretty much nothing I've ever learnt at school or higher into any use in a job! even jobs relevant to my qualifications albeit having the qualifications on paper is an advantage when looking for work.
Some of them used to be.
Dunno how it is now, but certainly in the 90's kids were taught basic electrical like how to wire up a plug etc.. Not sure how many school leavers would manage that correctly now days.
That I learnt at home, my first Garrard AP vinyl deck came plug less, also no lead from tone arm to amp which needed soldering. Most stuff came plug less in the sixties.
Indeed as did I, but that can vary from home to home based on the technical ability of the parents etc. In my case I could rebuild an engine by the time I was 14, but that was due to my father being a Lotus technician for most of his adult life
This thread is about density so there is probably a suitable unit of measure for that.
Well, none. As its no longer required to know. EU laws and 'ealth and safely from the 80's/90's put a stop to electrical appliances not coming with plugs.
To be honest, I knew how to chip PlayStations and repair laptops with an soldering iron at 14 years old before I knew how to wire a plug
Soldato
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The reason I chose school over college was because I was mature enough to realise I was NOT mature enough to go to college to do my A levels.
School you are still treated like a child, we had head counts in form. My mates who went to college could go into town if they didnt have a lecture and also no one worried about attendence too much. They invariably ended up at the pub. This isnt a pop at the quality of the education, it was fine but people were treated more as adults, and personally i was not ready for that at 16. I was better at 18 when i went to uni.
other than that the only difference that I recall - and it may have changed now as i am going back to early 1990s!!!! was that in school legally they had to teach general studies to every pupil as an extra A level.
Now, if you are talking more vocational colleges Whilst it is true they may be more practical and less theoretical I personally would not say intelligence has much to do with it. Some people just are more hands on and others prefer book learning.
Honestly, never knowing what i wanted to do i played it safe. My only real decision in my learning was to do separate science rather than combined.
for my GCSCs my 3 top subjects were physics, chemistry and biology..... so i chose them for A level (along with general studies). i did well in biology, and chemistry but not so well in physics (top tip, dont do A-level physics without A-level maths - unless it has changed -.
so at this point my choice again was simple. I was good at biology but felt adding in chemistry would make me more employable so did biochemistry with molecular biology at uni.
but,,. honestly my TLDR of all this, whilst i have an academic background i dont consider myself especially intelligent ... i was hardworking at school i will credit myself for that.
With hindsite i wish i had gone vocational and been an electrician or plumber, then i could have worked with my dad (who had a builders business). Had i of done that however i would not have met my wife - a laboratory manager at my old place of work, nor would i have my kid who biased as i may be is my greatest achievement, so hey ho. We all make our choices ****
***I do so wish i had taken my old university lecturers offer to set me up for an interview for the British Antarctic Survey however
School you are still treated like a child, we had head counts in form. My mates who went to college could go into town if they didnt have a lecture and also no one worried about attendence too much. They invariably ended up at the pub. This isnt a pop at the quality of the education, it was fine but people were treated more as adults, and personally i was not ready for that at 16. I was better at 18 when i went to uni.
other than that the only difference that I recall - and it may have changed now as i am going back to early 1990s!!!! was that in school legally they had to teach general studies to every pupil as an extra A level.
Now, if you are talking more vocational colleges Whilst it is true they may be more practical and less theoretical I personally would not say intelligence has much to do with it. Some people just are more hands on and others prefer book learning.
Honestly, never knowing what i wanted to do i played it safe. My only real decision in my learning was to do separate science rather than combined.
for my GCSCs my 3 top subjects were physics, chemistry and biology..... so i chose them for A level (along with general studies). i did well in biology, and chemistry but not so well in physics (top tip, dont do A-level physics without A-level maths - unless it has changed -.
so at this point my choice again was simple. I was good at biology but felt adding in chemistry would make me more employable so did biochemistry with molecular biology at uni.
but,,. honestly my TLDR of all this, whilst i have an academic background i dont consider myself especially intelligent ... i was hardworking at school i will credit myself for that.
With hindsite i wish i had gone vocational and been an electrician or plumber, then i could have worked with my dad (who had a builders business). Had i of done that however i would not have met my wife - a laboratory manager at my old place of work, nor would i have my kid who biased as i may be is my greatest achievement, so hey ho. We all make our choices ****
***I do so wish i had taken my old university lecturers offer to set me up for an interview for the British Antarctic Survey however
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Soldato
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Well this is a funny view.
In what way ?
This has a goodfellas feel to it.
She might have a bit of an unrepresentative sample there...
I've not even bothered putting the qualifications on paper anymore, post university and a couple of degrees I'm not sure many are too fussed about GCSEs or A-levels.
Though I guess it's not all about just getting a job, I mean for a lot of people you might as well cover "reading, writing and arithmatic" + (maybe throw in some basic IT lessons) up to age 11 then let people crack on with some apprentiships or other vocational training.
It's also preparing people for life in general, I guess I technically have used French for work occasionally but aside from that my GCSE French lessons have mostly been useful on holiday. Other subjects help you understand the world a bit better (history, geography) or simply give you a chance to explore an area you might be interested in pursuing further. It's not just learning facts and passing exams as one poster put it, we had to drop subjects before we got close to GCSEs and I still ended up with 11 of them. I still learned some basic German early on in secondary school despite dropping it and gaining no qualification in the subject, likewise, I don't have a GCSE in art but still studied it at school and later art history as one of my subsidiary subjects in 6th form. Most people don't get a qualification as a result of playing sport either yet schools still offer PE and sports afternoons, I did actually study for a sports science GCSE too though.
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Soldato
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my dad left school at 14 with not an o level to his name.
however unlike back in the day it takes more than just a willingness to show a can do attitude and a good work eithic to get a job......
even going back "only" 35 years my dad got made redundant. he had significant work experience working on a building site as well as a HGV licence. Already things were changing. He applied for a job as a coal man, he knew the area - born and bred there - and had the driving licence but they asked him all sorts of geology questions about different types of coal and how it was formed and also said he needed o levels..... =He knew the different types from a practical sense which is all was needed really but he was not even considered..
also refused job as dustbin man and post man.
this forced him to set up his own building firm with his brother, due to at the time a very generous self employed grant from the government (1 thing Thatcher did which my dad prospered hugely from) and he never looked back.
but now adays................. i dont think you would manage it without qualifications. Hell even my old job, which i did get as a graduate in 1998, at the time allowed you to go in a few rungs lower and train up with just a few a levels. now it is degree absolute minimum with masters or PHD preferred.
we do need to get back to proper apprenticeships tho (and not the modern ones from a few years back which were often used to exploit cheap labour). 5 years ago just before he retired my dad needed a carpenter to work with him reroofing a listed old building......... none of local joiners would touch it because it was too specialised. he ended up dragging his old mate out well into his 80s (I kid you not) who was blind in 1 eye due to a horrible wood splinter accident.
anyone with proper carpentry skills now can demand a small fortune, same with my uncle, well past retirement age but he does it as a hobby now (a very well paying hobby) is an old school blacksmith with a smithy he built in his garden. He swears blind before he scaled back and retired it was the devils own job getting staff to help out.
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Schooling in SA is a bit different, pretty much everyone does 6th Form unless they leave school at 16 with their GSCE equivalent and go to a technical college or just enter the job market.
So just have preschool for ages 4-6, primary school from the ages of 7-13 (grades 1-7), then 14-18 for high school (grades 8-12).
But I had 6 A-level equivalents for my final school year.
So just have preschool for ages 4-6, primary school from the ages of 7-13 (grades 1-7), then 14-18 for high school (grades 8-12).
But I had 6 A-level equivalents for my final school year.
Yep, I heard someone say once.
"The job market is full of power hungry Boomers, who demand degrees for jobs a 12 year old could do"
Its their way of filtering out 1000's of people who would apply for jobs such as dustbin, postman and cleaners due to being unskilled jobs. I dont have an degree so I wouldnt get any of those jobs
It was the view of my school at the time, early nineties.
I royally screwed up my GCSE's, had the humiliation to resit and then do AS level and A levels, I completed but not exactly fantastic. I went to college to learn IT (in 1992 computer education was virtually non-existent). Later, as a mature student, university.
There was a stigma attached with going to college at my school. Nowadays, if I had kids, I would have no hesitation for my children to leave, get an apprenticeship, learn a trade go to college etc.
Soldato
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Not all schools have 6th forms