Explaining International Qualifications to Employers

[Pages:2]Explaining International Qualifications to Employers

When applying for work opportunities in the UK, you may be asked to provide educational details of qualifications such as A Levels, UCAS points or bachelor/masters degrees, which all are part of the UK National Qualification Framework (UK NQF). While you may have undertaken an equivalent qualification in a different country, UK employers may not understand how this compares to the UK qualification. As such, it is important that your educational achievements are expressed in a way which is clear and allows for a meaningful assessment to be made as to whether educational requirements for a job have been met.

Equivalence of qualification

There is no official list in the UK which provides an equivalency comparison of international grades to the UK NQF. A general comparison can be provided by the UK National Academic Recognition Information Centre (UK NARIC), which is the National Agency responsible for providing information and advice on worldwide qualifications. Comparisons cannot be made on how grades for the international qualification will compare to its UK counterpart, meaning that UCAS points will not be given. Official comparisons by UK NARIC will incur a charge; however they do have an advice line for students with simple queries.

National Academic Recognition Information Centre for the UK (NARIC)

For European qualifications, you can compare between EU countries through the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). This provides an overview of what the equivalent qualification is within the UK, although does not provide information on the grading system.

European Qualifications Framework

UCAS also has produced a guide for further and higher education institutions comparing school level international qualifications to UK equivalents and provides a guide to the marking schemes for certain countries.

UCAS ? International Qualifications

For degree level qualifications, the UK government published a table of grade comparisons for overseas qualifications for initial teacher training. This is useful as a general guide as to what international higher education qualifications may equate to in the UK.

Department for Education and National College for Teaching and Leadership - Grade comparison of overseas qualifications

Presenting international qualifications on your CV or application form

When explaining international qualifications on CVs or application forms there are a number of ways they can be presented to provide context to the employer, and hence make it clearer what you have achieved:

List grades as a percentage if full marks were out of 100. If grades were marked on a scale, note what way the scale runs; for example, in a

scale of 1-5 a qualification could be listed as `achieved the highest grade of 1 on a scale of 1-5'. Any prizes, awards or other academic achievements should be specified and whether a ranking among other students was given; for example, `3rd among graduates' or `within the top 5% of year group'. Reference should be made to where in the educational framework of the country the qualification was achieved; for example, secondary school or university.

Where application forms do not allow for certain international qualifications, due to limitations placed on drop down boxes, then any space for `additional information' or `notes' can be used to explain these. If a conversion of the qualifications is detailed in this description then the basis of this conversion should be given, for example if it is based on the EQF.

Where no room is provided to explain international qualifications, or if you would like further advice on how to complete the education section of the application form, then you should contact the graduate recruitment/personnel department of the employer for guidance.

Useful resources

Classbase ? provides country educational profiles and is useful for checking which level of education a qualification falls under within a national framework. This website also provides a conversion to the most common grading scales and a link to the ForeignCredits GPA calculator.

World Education Services ? provides a free GPA calculator for converting international degree level qualifications to US equivalents.

NACES ?is an association of private credential evaluation services in the US who can provide conversions of international qualifications to US equivalents. Members of NACES have been screened by the association to ensure they meet certain standards, which is important in the US as there is no official government agency which monitors foreign credential agencies, and therefore no equivalent to NARIC.

University of Edinburgh Careers Service, February 2015

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download