Is that, um... good? If yes, yay!

Btw, saying that passing an 'SVQ4' is like an HND in old money? um... I don't know what any of that means. Anyway, if this is a good thing, then good. If not, then boo. If it's indifferent, then eh.

And uh. Yeah. I think that's about it.

Hee! yeah, it's complicated.

in Scotland there's Higher Education and Further Education.

HE usually leads to Ordinary Degrees (3 years) or Honours Degrees (4 years) and then onto Masters, Doctorates, PhD's and so on.

FE was traditionally more vocational in its basis and the qualifications were based around HNCs and HNDs (Higher National Certificate and Higher National Diploma). An HNC was considered about equivalent of passing first year of a degree course and an HND was the equivalent of passing a second year of a degree.

They tried to normalise it so that FE and HE weren't so split down the middle and a few years ago said that an HNC would now be an SVQ3, the next level would be SVQ4 and so on. By the time you get to SVQ5 you, in theory, have the equivalent of an ordinary degree from a university.

It's not quite worked out the way the Scottish Executive planned it to, but yeah, Sis is now one qualification away from having a degree equivalent.

See? Complicated. Scottish education system is excellent, so long as they stop changing the names of things...

(Uses icon again 'cause I still haven't quite forgiven you for breaking Dean. And now I've come to think on it some more, you've split up Sam and Dawn. Bastard. *g*)

God, that is complicated. I'm gonna forget that in like five minutes.

It's true, I did break Dean, and I did split up Sam and Dawn. But there will be... interesting things... yeah. Interesting things happening in the short follow-up I'm going to write. Which will be 13 Hours, 13 Months after 13 Days.

I think we're seeing a theme here.

The really silly thing is the huge essay I Sis had to write has been taken out of the course as of this year so it's already kinda an obselete qualification. That, coupled with the fact that she's currently not employed after having walked out of her job, almost makes it laughable!

YAY! Follow up! *bounces*

Wow! Yay for your sister. (And that's not something I'm inclined to say very often...) Well, at least it means that all the stress and soggy flash drives weren't for nothing.

If it was merely crap, I'm not surprised it passed. This is the equivalent of Level 2 for us, and to fail at that level an essay has to be pretty much utter crap, so especially if you've been putting in some help to iron out some of the most egregious mistakes, it would be likely to pass.

She put in a hell of a lot of research into this thing, I would say around final year dissertation level research, and I think that really came through in the essay. So even though the essay was not written all that well, and her conclusion... didn't, I think the fact that it was apparent she had put in the work helped her through.

And the fact that she sought help from qualified professionals outwith her course (those professionals being the library staff at Glasgow University... *g*) and mentioned that, was bound to help.

She done good, and she's kinda psyched about it (she almost deafened me on the phone!) so I'm really pleased for her.

I imagine it can only help with her confidence in herself, which is of the good. She may end up relying less on your help.

Congratulations to your sis. (:

LMZ

Thanks! I'm just heading out the door to go to dinner at her place and will pass it on!

You never know what they're letting get by these days.


Gabrielle