Text d. Computing qualifications in britain

To get a job in computing, you normally need to have a computing qualification of some kind. Students can study for a wide variety of computing qualifications.

After leaving school, students can study for further qualifications at a college of further education or a university. If they have gained¹ enough qualifications at school, they can study for a Higher National Certificate (HNC) or Higher National Diploma (HND) at a college, or a Degree² at a university. They can attend college to study for a vocational qualification known as a General Vocational Qualification (GVQ). In these GVQ courses³, students study a number of subject modules and need to gain a certain number of credits⁴ to progress to the next stage.

There is a wide variety of GVQ courses in computing including Information Technology (IT). Computing Support, and Programming, but students normally choose a course that has an emphasis⁵ on either software and programming, computing support, or business computing. The GVQ courses can be studied on a part-time⁶ or a full-time⁷ basis.

Although it is mostly males that choose to do these courses, females are also strongly encouraged to participate.

The female student, Linsey by name, is living in Scotland and is at a Scottish technical college of further education studying for a Level 3 General Scottish Vocational Qualification (GSVQ) in Information Technology. There 15 students in her class: 3 girls and 12 boys. The course has a technical computer support bias⁸ and involves subjects like communications, software support, hardware support, and networking, programming. On Mondays at 9.00 she has the Communications subject which is not about technical communications systems, but is about human communication and interaction. After it comes Numeracy 3, that is some kind of Maths. On Mondays in the afternoon Lynsey has no classes. On Tuesday in the Programming class Linsey studies computer languages like Pascal. After the coffee break Lynsey the Software class. In the Software class she studies how to use Windows and packages like databases. On Tuesday in the afternoon she has no more classes as well as on Wednesday. But sometimes they visit companies to see how they use computers. On Thursday at half past two Lynsey has the Hardware class. In the Hardware class Linsey finds out all about different things inside the computer. On Friday they have got Networks first thing. The Networks class helps to understand how computers work connected together. On a Friday afternoon that’s IT in Business and Industry. It’s applications. Then students have to write a report on each visit. Five or six pages long.

The course involves visits to computing departments in commercial organizations. As in most colleges and universities, there are a number of social activities for the students to enjoy. There's football and there was a Students' Night in Betty's Bar for all the new students to get to know each other. These are often organized by the Student Union, which is the official body run by students and representing the interests of students. They organize discos, but Linsey lives out of town so she doesn't stay on at night. Linsey also has a part-time job in the evening two nights a week just to make some extra money. She works at a hotel as a waitress, but she thinks it’s the worst hours for the worst pay.