The sentence you present for correction is difficult for those (including myself) not familiar with British High School level education, the way it is graded and
presented in a CV. From what I understand,
Advanced and
Ordinary Level (A- and O-levels; hyphen optional but recommended) Certificates of Education are comparable to US High School 'diplomas' given per subject, a certain number of which are required to complete High School or to ensure access to University education.
Individual A-levels are graded on an A-E scale, with an O-level pass between grades E and F (Fail). I'm not sure if O-levels themselves had a similar A-E grade range, as suggested in your example. But if such a grade range exists, I would modify (in red) Grelber's version as follows:
1977-1982
: 9 Grade 'A' O
-levels, where you perhaps could drop the quotes around the A.
To Alt and McNerd and others
Noting en passant that since so many people here are American I don't know if it's worth my while typing a summary of what happened to UK education since the mid 1980s; and being cognisant that since I had a proper education in the l960s I am clearly "old school" and very old fashioned indeed, here goes anyway.
When I was a child there was a rigorous examination taken at Primary School at age 11. This was called the
11+. If you passed you went to Grammar School and spent the next five years studying for
GCE O Levels. If you failed the 11+ you went to a Secondary Modern and spent the next five years studying for
CSEs. A mark of CSEs was that, a grade 1 CSE (top score) was the equivalent to a grade 6 (near-fail) GCE O Level.
This system was deemed too difficult for 11+ failures and too elitist. The entire Grammar School selection process was deemed "too hard". The Government prevailing at that time swept away years of "elitism" and introduced the GCSEs - an amalgam of the two previous certification standards. At a stroke they made the new examinations nearly unfailable.
Fact: students today doing GCSEs at age
16 are taking examinations which are
easier than the previous 11+ taken at the age of 11. That is the extent to which educational standards and certification have declined in the UK in the last 20 years.
It's the same with degrees. There used to be Universities which were difficult to get into - you had to prove academic ability - and Technical Colleges which provided more employment-orientated skills training. Now, all the former Technical Colleges call themselves Universities and "degrees" are handed out like sweetie-papers. (Excepting those from still rigorously selecting ones like Oxford and Cambridge, for instance, I hope and assume.)
In short, education in this country has all gone down the drain in the name of so-called "fairness". It is not fair to anyone especially employers, now. A candidate with 9 A** GCSEs is competing with everyone else with the same level of so-called achievement. I don't blame the kids and in a way I feel sorry for them. Two entire generations of schoolchildren have had any sense of attainment stripped away - if everyone is equal (which is patently untrue) then no-one has achieved anything.
"When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody."None of this addresses the letter I received last week which contained several typographical errors, which at first amused and then depressed me. If someone from a good University with a proper degree followed by several years in the financial industry has not the rigour to proofread her own submission then it deserves to be thrown into the bin. Instead, I wrote back, attempting to be helpful. I don't think I will get a reply: it was probably interpreted as sarcasm, which it was not.
