re: #190 Nojay UK

Actually reading what happened, a couple of home-schooled people with higher qualifications (college degree and the like, beyond a high school-level education) but without GEDs were refused enrollment in vocational school classes because the school absolutely required a high-school diploma or GED because of auditing by State and Federal funding bodies to ensure they weren’t packing their rolls with unqualified warm bodies to garner extra government money.

I’m in a similar situation here in the UK — I’ve applied for a Civil Service job which has a core requirement of two school certificate passes in Maths and English, and they want to see the actual paper certificates at interview. I sat (the equivalent predecessors to) those exams over forty years ago (I passed handily, before anyone says anything), the certificates are long lost, the school district that issued them doesn’t exist any more, hell the COUNTY I went to school in doesn’t exist any more. No interview for me, my degree in Comp Sci and Physics notwithstanding.

Frankly, here’s no reason why anyone, whether an employer or school, should trust that someone without a GED or diploma from an accredited school has been educated. We homeschooled The Older Boy, what with the Aspergers and the Social Anxiety*. He took the GED, and absolutely fucking NAILED IT. Not everyone is that bright, of course. But if I were the director of a school, why would I trust when parents come to me and say, “He’s educated, you can trust us!”?

*The head of Special Ed for the Middle School district said while she firmly believed every student would do better in a classroom, she couldn’t imagine what the right one for him would look like.