I've no idea

One thing I did do over the Easter weekend as part of the tidying up and cleaning was look for my exam certificates.

I didn't find them.  In fact, in looking for them it helped to clarify in my mind where they would have been, what I was therefore looking for and what has probably happened to them.

Basically as part of my extensive stuff clearance / downsizing activities I remember discovering all my old school reports and similar bits and pieces.  Now I know this is the sort of thing people like to hold on to for sentimental value, and I had been doing similar, but you have to bear in mind that I have enormous amounts of stuff and very little space to store it all.

As such I do recall taking the decision to get rid of it, but I have to confess I don't specifically remember binning them.  My guess is they just went in to a sack and got chucked with a load of other stuff.

Now the thing with the exam certificates is I think I had them tucked inside this binder thing that my school gave me when I left.  The idea of the binder was that it was meant to log your continuous professional development (CPD).  I remember I got actual certificates for the GCSE & A-level exams I passed and I'm now pretty sure I tucked them inside that binder.

And it's that binder I realised I was looking for and couldn't find.  Again, it's not something I specifically recall throwing away, but I do recall t being amongst my school-era stuff.  Since I now can't find it I must have thrown it away and the certificates have gone with it.

This is annoying mainly because I do not recall which subjects I took at GCSE and even for the ones I do recall I don't remember all of the grades.  I remember the A-levels, but GCSE I'm not at all sure beyond the 'core' subjects.

So obviously I will have done the likes of English, Maths and Science, but I don't know if I did all the humanities to GCSE level, for example.  Now I can work around it for my CV - I can probably guess at the number and put something along the lines of "10 GCSE, including Maths, English" and whatever.  The problem comes when you've got an application form that asks for them.

Quite why you have to fill out application forms and put all your qualifications I'm not sure.  When you do a CV the general advice is to focus on your "highest" academic qualifications, which is to say if you have a degree that's what you say and you'd don't even mention anything below that.  The exception is qualifications or similar you've received following your entry into the world of work, but even then it's generally good practice to only mention those that are relevant to the type of job you're going for.

Now you can actually get the exam boards to send you new copies of your certificates, but these are actually quite expensive.  The other option is I can ask what they have on me via a freedom of information request.  This is a lot cheaper, but the problem is that the exam boards are constantly changing and I don't actually know which of the exam boards they used.

I could also ask my old school, in theory, but it's a very long time ago now and they may not have the records.