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Glossary entry

Spanish term or phrase:

Grado de Educación Secundaria

English translation:

Compulsory Secondary Education

Added to glossary by David Brown
Jun 3, 2014 10:58
9 yrs ago
64 viewers *
Spanish term

Grado de Educación Secundaria

Spanish to English Other Education / Pedagogy
This is on somebody's CV, from Spain. Originally in Catalan as "Grau d’Educació Secundària".

It has the year 2000, followed by "Grado de Educación Secundaria" and then the name of the school.

The person would have been 23 years old doing this, according to their date of birth. There is nothing else before this, but after it they did an advanced diploma in catering (2001-03) and then a sommelier course, a university extension course (2006-08)
Proposed translations (English)
3 +5 Compulsory Secondary Education
5 +1 GCSE
4 High School Graduation
Change log

Jun 17, 2014 05:29: David Brown Created KOG entry

Discussion

Chris Neill Jun 3, 2014:
@all 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
neilmac Jun 3, 2014:
Mature students 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....
David Brown Jun 3, 2014:
GCSE or whatever 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
Charles Davis Jun 3, 2014:
@ Helena 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".
Helena Chavarria 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'.
Lisa McCarthy (asker) Jun 3, 2014:
@ Charles 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.
Charles Davis 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.
Charles Davis Jun 3, 2014:
@ Lisa 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.
Lisa McCarthy (asker) Jun 3, 2014:
More context 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.)
Lisa McCarthy (asker) Jun 3, 2014:
Forgot to say This is going into British English

Proposed translations

+5
43 mins
Selected

Compulsory Secondary Education

Probably means didn't go on to high school and do the bachillerato
Peer comment(s):
agree Charles Davis : Spot on. In context, probably "completed compulsory secondary education". Yes, this is someone doing it later. People who didn't finish school sometimes do ESO in their retirement, even. For UK, could add "equivalent to GCSE" in parentheses.
23 mins
agree James A. Walsh
1 hr
agree Helena Chavarria
2 hrs
agree neilmac
4 hrs
agree MarinaM
1 day 3 hrs
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Selected automatically based on peer agreement."
44 mins

High School Graduation

Secondary Education is equivalent to US High School. Primary education is middle/elementary school. However, I am not an expert in the Catalan dialect, but I am familiar, having lived in spain for almost a year.
Example sentence:

In 2000, I graduated from Martin Luther High School.

Something went wrong...
+1
42 mins

GCSE

General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE)

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 44 mins (2014-06-03 11:43:10 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Although this finishes at 16 years of age, they may have repeated various times.

from 16-18 years would be "bachillerato"

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 58 mins (2014-06-03 11:56:56 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Yes, that is strange..before you could repeat twice so that would be 18 years..that is if they did it in a public school and not in an adult learning centre...

They would even be too old to do Bachillerato (in a public school) as that finishes at 18 years (That's the A-level equivalent)...

So ummm wierd..possible explanation is that they studied in an adult learning centre
Reference:

http://www.fromspaintouk.com/2013/04/15/equivalencias-de-estudios-y-titulos-espana-vs-uk/

Note from asker:
Hi Chris, doing this at 23 is a bit strange though, isn't it?
Peer comment(s):
agree David Brown : That's what I would say too
2 mins
thanks david
neutral Charles Davis : That's more or less the UK equivalent, but I wouldn't translate it like this because it's not actually the same qualification. At most you could say "approximately equivalent to GCSE" in parentheses after the term.
21 mins
Something went wrong...
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