Howefamily

For the forms what do I put as years of formal education? I know this has been asked before but want to be sure that I get this right:

I went to primary, middle and secondary school and left at 16
I then went to college and resat my GCSE maths and also took GCSE law for 1 year of night school
Then I did 3 years of night school for AAT (Association of accounting technicians) but I didnt complete this by one paper (yes I know that was a bad decision at the time) so I have NVQ levels 1 and 2 but not 3
Then I faffed around for a couple of years doing night school for ACCA (Assoc of chartered and cert accountants) - and passed a couple of exams and then transferred to CIMA (Chartered inst. of management accountants) and became serious and did part time study for 5 years to get my professional qualification.
so is it -
primary and middle - 7 years, finished middle at age 11.5, started at 4.5 years
secondary - 5 years - left at 16.5 years

How do I work out the years of part time study? It certainly felt like full time at the time but thats not the point I know.


Thanks very much

JonboyE

And the same warning that I am not an expert on this.

However, I believe it is years in full-time education or full-tine education equivalent. How long does it take to get the CIMA designation if you start from scratch and study full-time? If it is three years you could claim a 3 year diploma in addition to time at school.

Hopefully someone can confirm (or rubbish) this.

zednought

My OH's education is almost the same as yours. The way we calculated her "part time" years of education was to tot-up the number of hours spent in the classroom (in front of a tutor) divide that by 15 (giving the number of "academic weeks" of study) then divide that by 32 (giving the number of "academic years" of study).

Obviously it's only a rough approximation but CIC seem to have accepted it.

Howefamily

Thanks thats great, did you have to explain how you came to the calculation or did you just put down the years?

Thanks

zednought

We didn't explain how we calculated the number of years -- we just put the totals down in section 10 of schedule 1. However, we did put a covering note on the front of schedule 1 explaining in long-form the actual courses took and the actual hours of study each week during the academic year.

Not sure if they gave us points for any of this as we might have made 67 points without any adaptability points; it certainly wasn't queried.

Howefamily

thanks, you have been very helpful

Kaye5

I've also done a number of p/t evening courses and home study courses which I need to tot up to f/t equivalent.

I've done a similar adding up exercise,

eg A level law = 3 hours classroom attendance a week for a year;
legal secretarial home study would = 3 hours classroom attendance a week for two years, therefore counted 6 hours.
I think the benchmark for = f/t study is 15 hours a week, so you need to reach that equivalent over one year (or more).

There has been a lot of discussion over primary secondary education years. I think most people now count it as 11 years.

Howefamily

can you just please confirm how many years you put for your part time study in total then. Thank you

Kaye5

I haven't done the form yet, but will claim just one year diploma f/t equivalent based on the following:

Legal Sec certificate level 2 - home study, would be 3 hours per week in college for one year
Legal Sec diploma level 3 - home study, would be 3 hours per week in college for one year
Private Secretarial Practice - home study, would be 3 hours per week in college for two years (= 6 hours a week over one year)
Scottish legal secretarial diploma - home study, would be 3 hours per week in college for one year
A level law - 3 hours college attendance per week for one year
Total = 18 hours

I'm not sure if they will take the A level Law, but would still be 15 hours equivalent college attendance. Hopefully, if we reasonable in our estimations, we have a good chance of it being accepted.