Secondary education on CV

KittyChai

When do you remove your secondary school education from your CV or do you always leave it on there? Im 9 years out of Secondary school, with five and a half years in my career with additional training and post grad education. Really dont think my secondary school and leaving cert subjects have any relevance.

Take it off unless it's really relevant to something you're going for.

Islander13

KittyChai wrote: »

When do you remove your secondary school education from your CV or do you always leave it on there? Im 9 years out of Secondary school, with five and a half years in my career with additional training and post grad education. Really dont think my secondary school and leaving cert subjects have any relevance.

If you have good leaving cert results might be worth leaving those details in. Can't do any harm and might be valued by some employers as its the one standard intelligence test we have (though I know its by no means perfect and too focused on memory over logic)

Mrs OBumble

Depending on the name of the school you went to, you might want to leave it on forever.

Mine is still there for CVs in this country (despite 20+ years of work experience) 'cos I believe that having gone to a catholic school overseas reassures people. But back home I'd take it off because of concerns about discrimination the other way.

Irish_Elect_Eng

Take it off once you have a degree and one job max.

Leaving it on can look like under-confidence in your higher quals or experience.
Or it can look like you are lat when it comes to trimming your CV.

user.name

I'd leave on the name of the school and years attended but I wouldn't bother leaving your lc results on it once you have degrees to follow up on.

Solair

I've run out of space on my CV for it.

If you've a degree, a postgrad and all that, I think we can safely assume that you've probably completed primary and secondary education.

I have seen CVs with CAO points written on them which is absolutely meaningless to anyone as they are only used for internal purposes within the CAO system to allocate places.

If you are going to list your Leaving Cert results, you would be better off actually listing the results for the subjects you want to highlight.

Also, for most jobs, they are more interested in seeing what you've done. So, listing your employment history highlighting all the positions you've held, responsibilities you've had and skills first can be useful.

It's also useful to highlight the relevant bits of your undergrad and postgrad degrees. Like, for example actually list subjects you took (not the results, but just the subjects). A lot of degrees and masters have really obscure names that may not really explain to someone what they are and why they're relevant to the job.

Research projects, special interests, communication skills, IT skills, areas you've shown leadership or teamwork etc... all very very important to highlight subtly.

The other thing to bear in mind is that some people list their school for the sake of the 'old school tie' thing. That can either work in your favour or really work quite badly against you if someone either dislikes your school or forms an assumption that you are a snob or that you are some kind of hooligan based on their impression of your school.

It can open a whole can of social class worms that you don't necessarily need. You can find old school rivalries are burnt-in to some people's brains in Ireland too, especially when it comes to schools that played sports like rugby or GAA.

I've found it ended up becoming an unnecessary and unwanted talking point when I applied for jobs abroad as my school had a ridiculously religious name.

So, in general, I would say if you don't need it i.e. you're long out of school and you've other qualifications, then don't list it at all.

The usual thing you'll see is a line like:

Irish Leaving Cert 2012 - Ballykisangel Community School

Mr. Loverman

Lots of good advice so far.

It really depends on your own situation.

If you never went to college it might make sense to include it, but if you (as you say yourself) have a fourth level education it makes little sense to include it unless you got very high points or went to a school which might have some pulling power (e.g. Blackrock College).

It also depends on who is looking at your CV. Some people who never went to college have a chip on their shoulder about college, just like some people from a working class background have a chip on their shoulder about people who went to Blackrock College. So really, I don't think there is a definitive right or wrong answer.

Personally I don't include my secondary education. I went to a nobody school and have a good few years of college behind me.

Thoie

KittyChai wrote: »

When do you remove your secondary school education from your CV or do you always leave it on there? Im 9 years out of Secondary school, with five and a half years in my career with additional training and post grad education. Really dont think my secondary school and leaving cert subjects have any relevance.

1 job and postgrad means you can delete secondary school and leaving cert. Unless you're applying for the civil service - some departments still asking for leaving results