Qualification is known as the act of qualifying something or someone. This verb, according to its definition, means evaluating and scoring the qualities or capacities of an object or individual, making a value judgment or establishing the level of sufficiency of the knowledge that students show when taking exams or certain exercises.
According to DigoPaul, the concept of qualification, therefore, is associated with that of evaluation, which refers to the act of estimating, considering, appreciating, evaluating or calculating the value of something. Thus, an evaluation is an option to rate the aptitudes and performance of students or employees, for example: “I have been analyzing the evaluation report and I am not satisfied, I think you could contribute much more to the company”, “Julio obtained a ten on the math assessment ”.
The rating, therefore, could be understood as the result of an evaluation. The score obtained in the exam or any other type of test is known by the same name: “The highest grade in the course has been seven points”, “My grade was not enough to pass the subject. “
In school matters, we have to underline that the grades for students in Spain range from 0 to 10 and they need at least a 5 to pass the exam or test in question. Thus, we speak of Outstanding when they obtain a 9 or 10, Notable when it is a 7 or an 8, Good when it achieves a 6, Sufficient when it is 5 and Insufficient when the note is less than the aforementioned 5.
This scale or establishment of marks is different for each country. Thus, for example, in Argentina it ranges from 1 to 10 and students of a specific subject need to obtain at least a 7 to consider that they have successfully passed the test established by the teacher.
Beyond an evaluation or formal examination, the qualification, in the sense of establishing a judgment, is a notion that is used in everyday life at all times. When a person decides to buy a car and compares between several models and brands, what he is doing, in short, is evaluating each vehicle to decide which one to buy according to the rating given to each one. The buyer does not have to evaluate the car by means of a score but, in practice, he will end up acquiring the one that he qualified best according to his preferences.
In the cinematographic field, the term that now occupies us is also used. Thus, it is common to hear about film ratings, an expression that defines that the different films are organized by categories based on the age of the audience to which they are directed.
In this sense, we have to underline that in Spain, for example, we find productions that are suitable for everyone; others that are not recommended for children under 7 years old; those that are not recommended for minors under 12, 16 or 18, or the so-called X movies. The latter are those works that are strictly prohibited for all those who are not of legal age.