This is the sanitised list of qualifications given out by schools, colleges and universities in the United Kingdom.

That's pretty straight forward. GCSEs for school leavers. A-levels for sixth formers. Three years at university gets you a degree. Another year gets you a MA or MSc. Then if you wanna go into academia, you do a Ph.D.

These qualifications are understood pretty universally - by employers, by universities, by people abroad and by the ordinary man on the Clapham Omnibus.

Sadly, there is thousands of other diplomas - a veritable alphabet soup of bureaucratic ineptitude and failure. Here's a rough guide:

AS (Advanced Subsidiary)Half an A-level. The government introduced this so that people could get a piece of paper after a year even if they didn't want to continue with it to A-level. For everybody who wants to actually complete their A-levels, it means they can do more exams. Great.AVCE (Advanced Vocational Certificate of Education)Kind of like an Advanced GCE - A-level to you and me - but with the 'G' for 'General' replaced by a 'V' for 'Vocational'. The idea was to make it so that you could do "vocational A-levels". Sadly, they weren't actually marketed as "vocational A-levels" but as "AVCE", which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Also, having introduced the AVCE, the government didn't take the sane next step which is to make all the other vocational courses offered elsewhere into VCEs.Key Skills CertificateUtterly pointless qualification which the government introduced to vocationalise otherwise academic subjects - the idea being that the Key Skills Certificate would be there to prove to employers that Johnny with his History A-level can do all the things he needs while stacking shelves at Tesco as well as being able to tell you all about Kaiser Wilhelm II. There are six key skills - Communication, Application of Number, Information and Communication Technology, Problem Solving, Improving One's Own Learning and Performance and Working With Others. You can exempt yourself from the first three by doing an A-level or equivalent in English, Mathematics and ICT (hint: don't. ICT qualifications aren't worth the paper they are printed on.). The level of entry for Key Skills is determined by GCSE performance in those subjects. Let's use maths as an example: if you got below a C in GCSE maths, you are entered for Key Skills at level 2 by most schools. To satisfy Key Skills at Level 2 for Application of Number, simply having a GCSE suffices. If you got a C or a B in maths, you are typically entered for level 3. If you got an A or an A*, level 4. But if you got an A or an A* for maths GCSE, there's some likelihood that you'll probably be doing A-level Mathematics. In which case, you are exempt from doing the Key Skills - simply doing A-level Mathematics is enough to convince the industry lobbyists that you are smart enough to operate a cash register. So, what's left are the people in the middle - people who got above C in maths, but didn't decide to do maths at A-level - who have to do Key Skills in Maths. The lessons and exams for Key Skills are pretty damn remedial and quite pointless. The people who need it the most are excluded from it, whereas the people who did well have to take it. Bass ackwards. If you have any choice in the matter, don't bother with Key Skills if you have any intention of going on to university. They are completely fucking pointless and no university course worth attending accepts them.Foundation DegreeTwo-thirds of a real degree but with a vocational bent. Designed in consultation with industry but delivered by universities. Despite more people wanting to go to universities than ever before, people have been sceptical about doing Foundation Degrees. That's obviously because they haven't been marketed to applicants well enough and not because employers haven't heard of them, because most people would find themselves having to go on and do a top-up and because they are new and untested and you end up having a "FdA" rather than a "BA"."Art Foundation"For people in visual arts, an art foundation course is well understood. It's been going for a long time and is a perfectly reasonable qualification. You do an art foundation course if you intend to go on and do an art degree. It is an accelerated course where one tries out a lot of different arts - drawing, painting, print-making, fashion design, photography, video, sculpture, textiles and so on. The idea is you can see which ones you do best and then apply for a degree programme in that area. To confuse matters, the government have introduced 'Foundation Degrees'. They aren't the same thing.NCFEFormerly the 'Northern Council on Further Education'. Now it's just 'NCFE' - the letters don't stand for anything. Which is pretty fucking stupid for an examining board. They offer vocational Diplomas in all sorts of stuff. NCFE Diplomas aren't to be confused with National Diplomas, Diplomas in Higher Education, Graduate Diplomas or the new vocational Diplomas. They are called Diplomas and are vocational, but they don't seem to be the same thing as the new Diplomas. They also offer Certificates, but these shouldn't be confused with National Certificates, General Certificates in Secondary Education (GCSEs), Advanced General Certificates of Education (GCEs), Certificates in Higher Education or a swimming certificate. NCFE has the absolutely worst qualification specifications ever written - they are about 99% shit to 1% of content. But they do offer a Level 3 Certificate in Creative Craft using Patisserie and Confectionery which sounds pretty damn yummy.Level 3, 4 etc.A few years back, the government decided to introduce Sats, exams for 7, 11 and 14 year olds. Sats results are given as 'Levels' - a positive integer. They go from 1 to 7 (if I recall correctly). The middle of that curve is 3, 4 and 5, obviously. One might say that little Johnny has gotten level 4 at mathematics. Isn't he clever? But that's sadly not the only use of 'levels'. Levels are also used to describe the level of qualifications. Because of the complete clusterfuck of NVQs, National Diplomas, VCEs, Key Skills and all this other shit, the government decided it'd be a jolly good idea to make it so that one could easily compare the level of, say, two different things calling themselves a 'Diploma'. So they have levels. Nobody ever quite says what level the levels are. Here it is though: an A-level is Level 3 in the National Qualifications Framework. And GCSEs are roughly level 2.

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