School-leaving qualifications

While some children in the UK do unfortunately finish their time at school without any or very few qualifications, most will breathe a sigh of relief on receiving their exam results in the summer. Under current regulations, they must remain in education until age 18, giving them plenty of time to amass their individual collections of school-leaving qualifications. The options include GCSEs, GCE A-Levels, BTECs, OCR Nationals, Scottish Highers and the International Baccalaureate Diploma, depending on what is offered at the particular secondary school or college.

The school-leaving age has steadily risen from 10 in the late 1800s and at that time the concept of obtaining a qualification at school was fairly new, with the very first examinations having been set in 1858. From 1918, by which time the school-leaving age was 14, the School Certificate was introduced for the 20% of children who stayed on until age 16 and the Higher School Certificate for those still there at age 18.

In 1951 a range of subject-related General Certificate of Education (GCE) O-Levels and A-Levels came into being. In 1965 the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) appeared but was not valued by employers as highly as O-Levels, so in 1988 they were merged into the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).

(Image: David Hawgood at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)