O levels

[leahbee]

What year did O levels become compulsary in england and how far back are results checkable?

[kchunter86]

1951 Introduction of the General Certificate of Education (GCE)

The General Certificate of Education (GCE) as well as O-levels and A-levels were introduced, mainly to grammar schools, in 1951, and replaced the School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/childrens_lives/educa tion_creativity/education_england/index.html

this is a nice little website telling you all about education legislation in england from the 1800s onwards.

not sure how long records are held though sorry or even who it would be you got in touch with. Glad i could answer 1 of your questions though. x

[Rollo]

But it was never compulsory for anybody to take any O level.

[kchunter86]

ok done a bit more digging for you and found this

18. How far back do your records go?
Our records start from 1908 in AQA Manchester and from 1955 in AQA Guildford so even if you
took your exams a long time ago we should still be able to trace them.

so unless you are like over a hundred years old you will be able to get them but do note they charge for the service of sending out your results again

heres the link for the page i found, ignore the aplication at first but there is an FAQ section further down....... and yes true rollo o levels wernt compulsory. x

[Lil O'lady]

Rollo is correst - I guess about 1972 the school leaving age was raised from 15 to 16 and the CSE examination was introduced to enable less academic kids to get paper qualifications.
In 1988 the GCE and CSE were amalgamated into the GCSE that we have now.
But I don't know that it has ever been compulsory to take any exam. It is compulsory for schools to offer every child equality of opportunity, but regrettably the pupils can no longer be strapped to a seat and forced to get cleverer.
To check on results you need to lnow the exam board that provided them: try this link http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_4521.aspx

Lastly, depending on the circumstances, this may be something of a dead end as qualifications gained beyond a certain period back tend to get disregarded.

[buildersmate]

Just as well O Levels aren't compulsory (that's with an O, by the way - as per English Language). There'd be a awful lot of people still running around in short trousers if they were.