To be surprised you mumsnetters criticised my ex’s school !!

Good in the context of only being allowed to take CSEs, maybe. A girl came to my school for sixth form who had previously attended a comp where the headteacher attempted to get rid of O levels and make all pupils sit CSEs. His logic was that a top grade CSE was as good as an O level pass and it was elitist to have a two tier system. There was apparently a revolt from the parents of the more able children who wanted their children to go on to further and higher education and he had to backtrack. (This was the mid to late 1970s.)

He has 6 O levels so if he does have CSEs they weren’t his only qualification 😄

What do you think your DP's school experience in 1986 has to do with that school now? The school is like trigger's broom. None of its constituent parts are the same as they were then.

I remember being surprised at the time, at my deeply nondescript comprehensive, to read somewhere that the average level of attainment at 16 was a grade 4 CSE. Most pupils in standard classes would have taken around 8 of them. Some O level candidates would have sat more papers if they'd taken a couple a year early.
Anyway. 2 CSEs wasn't great, even then. But I suspect that's not really a surprise, OP.

The King also has a degree from Cambridge. (Yes, I know normal entry criteria didn't apply in his case.)

I'd forgotten about AO levels. At my school there was just AO Further Maths available for girls doing Science A levels but not Maths A level. (It was a girls' school - not saying the boys didn't have to do the AO level!)

No idea how CSEs were marked but I know A levels were marked quite differently from now (O levels too?). Nowadays I believe the grade boundaries are decided as actual marks in advance, so if a candidate gets (say) 80% or over they get an A star, 70-80% they get an A, etc etc. If the majority of candidates get over 80%, they all get an A star. The mark is awarded for reaching a certain level and says nothing about how everyone else did.

Decades ago what they decided in advance was what percentage of the candidates should get each grade. So if there was a subject with 6000 candidates and they'd decided that the top 10% would get an A, they'd rank all the marks in order and the top 600 got an A even if the actual marks were quite low (e.g. if it was a really tough paper). You were being graded on your performance relative to everyone else. An A was rare because that was how the system was designed.

I think King Charles has two A Levels, and an Oxbridge degree

CSEs were practical and perfectly respectable, but many children got more than 2 of them. The top grade was equivalent to the lowest O Level pass grade.

Two CSEs was poor (the whole idea of CSEs was pretty weird), but some kids didn't get any so he's two up on them. As long as he achieved something later, who cares.

If he enjoyed his school days and the boys were not too delinquent, I'd pay no attention. However a lot can change in the years since he left so don't judge fellow posters too much.

I'm an old biddy now but have seen the status of schools go up and down, then up again, in my lifetime. Parents can only choose based on the here and now.

Your DH left this school nearly 40 years ago so it has probably changed a bit!

In 40 years a school will have changed so much that it’s irrelevant what your ex got, even if the school was ranked top in the country in 1986 it could still be an awful school which only gets dire results now. Your ex’s results have no bearing on what kind of school it is now, although as it happens his results sound like they were below average for their time so maybe the reputation of the school hasn’t changed much.

How do you not know that 2 CSEs is crap? 2 O levels wouldn't have been great either, nor would two GCSE which replaced both.

Two top grade CSEs in English and Maths - good. No, not good. Equivalent to mediocre GCSEs in English and Maths.

The top 20% of children sat O levels, I got 7 O levels and DH got 10.

2 CSE was pretty dire, you would expect 5 and I’m pretty sure children generally sat 5 subjects.

I have no idea wether your Ex,s school is a good school or not but given he left it nearly 40 years ago its bound ti be a different school now ti whst it was the. The teaching staff will all be different for a start.

I'm a bit boggled that you thought "two CSEs and no one stabbed him" was evidence against the school being shit. Even in the 80s, that was... not good. Better than "functionally illiterate", but not good.

His results were shit.

CSEs were for the lower achieving students. They typically took 7-10 of them. Scraping through school with 2 CSEs is basically failing pretty much everything.

@Jumell I'm not trying to put him down. Qualifications aren't everything and perhaps he has had great success after school. It's not a measure I would judge him by.

I just don't think "2 CSEs and all of his limbs" is much of an advertisement for the school is all.

There were CSEs, O levels, AO levels, A levels, and S levels.

I think the king has 3 CSEs?

Somewhere 40 years ago is not going to be the same as today.

I have too and they were perfectly nice boys (we were all teenagers at the time, I was in 6th form, they were working). But I didn’t take their lack of qualifications to be evidence of what an amazing school they had been to

2 ? or did you mistype 12...

There were also Additional levels between O and A. This was in 1980.

I took my Maths and Biology a year early and then the Additionals the year when I turned 16.