Grado de Educación Secundaria

19:47 Jun 3, 2014 

Nice debate and the idea of translating equivalent qualifications may depend on the target audience (in my defense haha)...I thought that Graduado en ESO had three exams...language, technology and social. ufff spanish education system is a potential mine field, especially after the the change from LOE to LOGSE

15:51 Jun 3, 2014 

I worked and faffed about for a few years after leaving school in the UK and didn't go to university until some years later. I was asked to redo some GCEs (called Highers, in Scotland) as a prerequisite to university entry. In Spain, I was also asked to do the "graduado escolar" to get one TEFL job, but I drew the line at that....

13:10 Jun 3, 2014 

I tend to agree with Charles. People can leave secondary school without any qualifications. I don't know if it still exists in the UK, but there is/was a cerificate that simply states(d) that someone has completed secondary education

12:59 Jun 3, 2014 

How interesting! (And actually not unreasonable, in my opinion, given the level I see in the 4º ESO homework my wife marks.) It's yet another argument for translators not getting involved in questions of equivalence: just translate the term without localising it, and leave it to the experts to match it up with the target language system.

You're right, it is commonly known as graduado escolar, though actually that term, which dates back to the old days of EGB, is no longer official. The proper official term is now (título de) graduado de educación secundaria obligatoria. But colloquially, people do still say "graduado escolar".

12:45 Jun 3, 2014 

FYI, some time back I discovered on the Spanish Ministry of Education's website that five GCSE's are equivalent to 1st year of Bachillerato. So if you wanted to translate the qualifications into UK studies (which you shouldn't) ESO is actually lower.

And yes, there are special courses for adults who want to pass ESO. I think it's normally called 'Graduado Escolar'.

12:18 Jun 3, 2014 

I agree with you that we can't put GCSE or A Level or anything like that as they don't exist in Spain and it is actually incorrect to use that as a translation. I think I'll keep it in Spanish and just put an explanation in brackets after it.

12:15 Jun 3, 2014 

I know opinions differ on this, but I'm very strongly of the opinion that you shouldn't say people have qualifications they don't have. It is not true to say that this person has GCSE. All you can say is that they have a qualification equivalent to GCSE. You can add a note or explanation in brackets to say that this thing, whatever you want to call it, is equivalent to GCSE — that's quite useful — but in my opinion it's wrong simply to translate it as GCSE.

12:09 Jun 3, 2014 

This is what's familiarly known as Graduado Escolar. There's no final exam as such. It just means you've passed every year of compulsory secondary education up to and including 4º ESO (age 16 normally).

It's quite common for people to do it as adults if they failed to complete ESO at the usual time. If they want to do any kind of qualification, inc. vocational, such as catering here, they've got to finish ESO first. There's are loads of adult education centres where they can do it.

12:08 Jun 3, 2014 

I've just seen now under 'Additional Courses" they have put:

1993-1994 Contabilidad General con Aplicación Informática (followed by the name of a centre for technical studies.)

11:50 Jun 3, 2014 

This is going into British English