British school system

[pensnest]

phaballa asked here about the British School system. Aha. I shall try to explain. Anyone who doesn't care, please pass swiftly by. Any UK-dwellers who have more up-to-date experience than mine, do comment with amendments.



The following refers to the state school system, which is what mostly applies. Private schools (some of which are also known as 'public schools') will be addressed later.

School year (for everyone) runs from early September to some time in July, with a holiday for Christmas (2 - 3 weeks), a holiday for Easter (2 weeks), and the long summer holiday (6 - 9 weeks). So, three Terms (Autumn, Spring and Summer). There are also half-term holidays in the middle of the terms. State schools have a week off, private schools (which have longer between-term holidays) usually just have two or three days around a weekend. nb Holidays, not vacations, though the latter term does get used at university.

Very small children may attend playgroup or 'nursery school'. Mine, for instance, went to a local nursery school, which was held in someone's home, three mornings a week, starting (once a week) when they were two and a half). The two other mornings a week they went to the local playgroup. Both paid for by us, though it's possible there may now be state (ie free) nurseries now.

Then, there is Primary School.

Children start school as 'rising five', ie in the year in which they turn five. Though some primary schools have an attached 'Nursery' which the kids can go to when they're four. Usually (I think) the child will join the 'Reception Class' in the term when he has his fifth birthday. So my Bun started in September (November birthday), and Boy started in April (June birthday).

With reasonable luck, they basically learn to read in Reception class. Then they go on to Year 1 (5-6 year olds), and Year 2 (6-7s). Reception and Years 1 and 2 constitute Infants School.

Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 constitute Junior School. Some Primary Schools cover both Infants and Juniors, others are one or the other. In my 'village', there was one Infants School and one Junior School (basically on the same site, but with separate entrances, separate Heads etc), and one Primary School, which was actually smaller but took children from Reception to Year 6 (and had a small Nursery on-site, too).

In Primary school, the general pattern is that the class teacher covers everything except Music and (possibly) Games/Sports. The class - ideally no more than 20 kids but in practice no more than 30 - will have its own classroom. The pattern of the day is something like, school starts at 8.45, there's 'assembly' where the entire school get together in the main hall for a bit of singing and brief moral instruction from the head or a senior teacher, plus notices/announcements. In my day, aeons ago, the singing was Christian, but these days perhaps less so. There's a playtime break mid-morning, perhaps 15-20 minutes, and then lunch: each Primary School will have a kitchen for the provision of cooked meals, but it's very common for children to take in packed lunch from home. Lunch break includes a play period. Then the day ends somewhere in the region of 3pm - a bit earlier (maybe) for Infants, perhaps 30min later for Juniors.

In most Primary Schools there will be a uniform, something simple like a sweatshirt and polo shirt in the specified colours, possibly with the school's name or badge on, and black or grey trousers/skirt. Plimsolls (house shoes?) are normally worn inside the building.

At the age of 11, it's time for Secondary School. Secondary schools are much bigger than Primary - six or eight different classes/forms in a year group, rather than the one/two which is likely in a Primary. But nowhere near the intimidatingly massive size that American High Schools seem to be. My town has a population of around 90,000. I don't know how many primary schools there are, but there seem to be about a dozen Secondary Schools here. It is (or at any rate, when mine started attending, it was) possible to select the school for your children based on something other than geography; naturally, some of the schools have a better reputation than others, and these days, some 'specialise', eg my kids' school was particularly good at Maths/Computing, another one in town has a good reputation for music and drama. But mostly, they'll attend the closest.

The basic pattern of the day is much the same as Primary school, but with an earlier start and later finish. There's likely to be Assembly, but for most schools it won't cover all the students as they have no hall large enough, so each group will have one assembly per week, and it'll be more for notices and a little homily than for singing. (Sad, really, I used to enjoy singing hymns at assembly. In the olden days.) Lunch time is usually staggered, in order to fit them through the dining room, and again, it's much more the norm now to take packed lunch than to eat the catered food. (When I was at school it was only the handful of Jewish girls or anyone with Weird Allergies who ate packed lunch. Literally five people out of nine hundred.)

Uniform isn't quite so much the rule at Secondary school, but it's more common than not. Again, usually something fairly simple, eg black/grey/navy trousers/skirt, matching blazer, white shirt, V-necked sweater/jersey/jumper in school colour. My children wore black jacket with the school badge sewn onto the pocket, white shirt, school tie and black trousers (there were blue jerseys but nobody ever wore them). All available through basic shops like local department store, Marks & Spencer, or the late lamented Woolworths. Other schools locally have a sweatshirt instead of a blazer. The girls at the local Catholic secondary school have to display themselves in pleated plaid skirts, poor things.

Specialist or not, every secondary school will cover the full spectrum of subjects (though something like Physics at a senior level may involve sharing teaching with another local school). The children have their own classroom as a base, but will have lessons with a specialist teacher for each subject. Back in my day, it was usual for the teachers to come to the classroom rather than having the students at the junior end of the school moving around all the time, but as we progressed up the school, we tended to go to them. I don't know whether it's still general practice. In most schools, year groups will be divided by subject into sets defined by ability, perhaps six sets for a year group of five classes, so they all take Maths etc at the same time.

We have two sets of public examinations. The first, GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) are taken in Year 11, ie when the students are 16 or thereabouts. By this stage, students will have dropped some subjects. Mine took 9 or 10 GCSEs each, I can't remember exactly. They will be awarded a certificate for each subject they pass (grades from A*, A, B, etc, I think E is the lowest pass grade but I could be wrong. I never had much experience with Fail grades...). So a very strong student could reasonably get 10 A* GCSEs. As well as the obvious subjects like Maths, English Language, French, History etc there are such things as Home Economics (ie cookery) and stuff like woodwork, needlework and so forth which has a fancy name now.

Students may leave school at 16, and many do - usually after taking their GCSEs, so that they have some qualifications. The exams are taken in January (some parts) and May/June these days, with the summer period being the most intense exam period. They are marked by outside agencies, and results are announced in something like the third week of August.

Years 12 and 13 are for historical reasons also often known as the "Sixth Form". At this stage, students specialise and do A-Levels (Advanced Certificate of Secondary Education, I think, but they're only ever referred to as A-Levels). There will usually be three or four subjects. eg my Bun did Maths, Physics and Chemistry, and I think Geography in her Year 12, dropping it after the AS-Level) and my Boy did Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry. (I did French, German and History.) These days, the AS-Level exams are sat at the end of Year 12, and the final A-Level at the end of Year 13. (In my day the first year of the sixth form was the 'fun' year - you were doing only the subjects you cared about, and had no important exams at the end of the year. We had no truck with this AS-Level nonsense.) Students show up for their exams, and when the exams are over so, effectively, is their school time, although there's usually a final assembly to say goodbye to them. There is no ceremony! NO graduation! The nearest we get is Prizegiving, which may happen in September: students may return to school one evening to pick up their A-Level certificates in a fairly low-key affair which does not involve mortar boards or photographs, though there may be a worthy ex-student invited to give a speech. At my kids' school, the GCSE students were also given their certificates at Prizegiving, and there were prizes for subjects, too, usually for students who were just starting Year 13, but sometimes for lower down the school. It's not compulsory, and most don't bother to go.

Many students don't stay on at school for the 'sixth form' but do their A-Levels, AS-Levels or the slightly more 'practical' alternatives at a sixth-form college. More relaxed, no uniform, probably a lot less effective at getting them through their exams... Oh, uniform requirements usually broaden a bit for sixth-formers in schools, eg my children had to wear a smart suit and shirt, with a tie for the boys. My own sixth-form uniform was a different coloured blazer and variegated tie.

A-Level results are announced in the middle of August (a week earlier than the GCSEs). During Year 13 (second year of Sixth form), students spend much time and anguish trying to decide where to go to university and what to do there. They apply through UCAS; there is a complicated form with details of their GCSE and AS-Level results, plus the student's personal why-you-want-me application and a teacher's report. Students can apply to six universities. The universities hold open days during the year for general visits, and some may ask candidates up for interview, though that seems less common nowadays than it was when I was applying.

Each university will decide whether to offer the student a place, and the student then decides which offers to hold. The offers are conditional upon the A-Level results, and the student may hold a firm offer and a backup - so if the first choice wants three A grades at A-Level, the prudent applicant will hang on to a backup offer of, say, ABB. (Offers these days are a *lot* higher than they used to be! When I was at school it was only Oxford and Cambridge (and maybe Durham) who asked for AAA, it was *far* more usual to receive some mixture of B and C grades in your offer.) The exact level of the offer made will depend on the standing of the university and the demands of and popularity of the course. Once the A-Level results are out, UCAS confirms which offer the student is going to be taking up by referencing the offers held and the results achieved. A student who hasn't managed to fulfill the requirements may apply to universities via the Clearing system, in which universities with spaces on courses advertise them and students grab what they can.

I said I'd mention the private schools, too. Okay.

We have Public Schools, which are a specific type of private school. Not sure how exactly they are defined, but they are different. There are a handful of girls-only public schools, and some mixed - more which have a mixed sixth-form, these days. But basically, the public school system is for boys. (If you want to do a popslash AU, this is probably what you'd go for.)

Boys destined for public school are likely to start out by attending Prep School - which starts at age 7, so is like an extended Junior School. Public School Entrance is at 13, and I believe there are exams, I *think* it's called Common Entrance and applies across all the Public Schools, but I may be wrong about that. Once in, the parents are involved in massive expenditure (from Prep School onwards), and there are smarter uniforms (google the Eton uniform!). Academic standards are usually high and the schools feed vast proportions of their pupils into Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Public Schools are boarding schools, although not all pupils board. The boarding will be within separate houses (the school is usually also divided into Houses, for the purpose of competition; at my father's school each House had a corresponding boarding house).

Private schools in general are a lot more varied, but are simply not supported by the state system, and so charge fees. They may be boarding schools, but aren't necessarily. Term times for private schools (including public schools) will be shorter than for the state schools, and they're likely to have far smaller classes and better facilities.

There aren't actually that many private schools, and the vast majority of the UK population attend state schools.

Universities: we used to have universities and polytechnics, the latter being designed to offer a more practical degree, the former more academic and specialising in research. Now we just have a vast array of universities and it's really important to know what kind you want to attend before you apply!

An honours degree (Bachelor's) is the most usual kind, and for the majority of courses, takes three years. Courses are in general, specific. If you go up to university to study English Literature, you won't have to take Maths, Geography, History etc. If you go to read Chemistry, you won't be bothered with French, or English etc - though there may be a foreign language option if you want it. So undergraduates are not as a rule 'majoring' in anything, or 'minoring' either; they're taking a degree in... whatever. Also, you won't be picking out a bunch of classes - you'll be told, at least as a first year, what they are. Generally speaking you then start to select in your second and third years, subjects within your course of study. You'll have lecture, lab work (if you're reading a science subject), seminars, and tutorials (very small groups for addressing work problems with a senior member of the university).

Tuition for a year is a bit more than £3,000 (for a British student). First years (freshers) will almost certainly be offered accommodation (people *can* stay at home and go to a local university, but few do, and they're kinda missing the point anyway) on or close to campus. It'll probably be around £4,000 for a year (well, nine months, they don't get to live there during the long summer vacation), more in big cities, especially London. Long, long ago British students did not pay tuition, and were in fact given a grant towards the cost of living as a student. Ah well. We have more universities now, and everybody is encouraged to go, whether their degree is of the slightest use or not. So students have to pay.

Oh, and not all our universities are campus universities. Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bristol, various others (mostly in big cities) do not have campuses. Oxford, Cambridge and Durham are collegiate - you apply to a particular college, and your study is directed/overseen by faculty members at that college, although lectures, lab work and the like will be common to the whole university.

You'll emerge from university with an honours degree (First Class, Upper Second, Lower Second, or Third - but that probably only matters until you get your first job, or are accepted for further study) or possibly with a humble Pass degree, and call yourself a BA or BSc (or something else if you read Law or Divinity, I believe). In fact, you graduate! And yes, there'll be a ceremony involving gowns and such. Details of which will vary enormously depending on the university. (At mine, we got to wear furred hoods - down our backs - and walked in procession through the town to the Senate House for a ceremony in Latin. Which was nice. Then there was a jolly good dinner back in college.)


I'm sorry to have to tell you that if you want a Scottish AU, you'll need to ask a Scot for information, as the system there works somewhat differently!

Comments

[phaballa.livejournal.com]

Wow. Wow. It's so different. So very very different. It's kind of amazing how these different systems happened. I am guessing federalism had something to do with forming the American public school system into such a different looking beast from the British system.

[pensnest]

I suspect it's not until we see it written out in this kind of way that it's clear what the differences are. I should probably ask for something similar on the American system, it'd be pretty useful!

[phaballa.livejournal.com]

The American system is so simple compared to this! It's like...

kindergarten: around age 5, usually 1/2 days

1st-6th grade: grade school or elementary school. You have a "home room" teacher, and then you usually have level groups for the main subjects like math, reading, and sciences. So your desk is in your home room and you take lunch with your home room class, and have subjects like social studies and geography and spelling with home room. And then you switch classes for reading, math, and science depending on your skill level.

7th-8th grade: Jr High. Sometimes this is 6-8 or 7-9 and sometimes it's called middle school. You still have a home room but you only go there once or twice a quarter/trimester for school-wide things like student council elections and grade cards. Everyone has to take the basic subjects (English, math, social studies, science) and then there are electives like art, music, home ec, shop, foreign languages and so on. Classes are determined by skill level. So when I was in 8th grade, I was taking algebra for my math, but some people will still in pre-algebra or fundamentals math.

9-12: high school. Pretty much the same as Jr High, with classes split by skill level, but with more options for electives and actual history classes instead of social studies (which is sort of like sociology/anthropology on a really low level.) We had core requirements like, everyone had to do 4 years of English and 2 years of foreign language and so on, but you could also take honors and AP classes, which were harder than normal classes but you could get higher grades in them. Technically my high school was on a 4-point grade scale (A = 4, B = 3, C=2, and so on) but you could get an H in an honors or AP (advanced placement) class, which was worth 5.

We did have some required tests, but that differs from state to state. In Ohio we had standardized tests in reading, math, science, writing, and citizenship that you had to pass before you could graduate. We started taking them in 8th grade and you just had to pass once each. There were standardized tests for college admissions, either the SAT or the ACT, depending on where you lived. ACT was mostly midwest. These are very general tests that are supposed to measure your verbal and analytical abilities as compared to the rest of the people who also took the test that year.

Colleges then looked at those tests scores, your grades, your recommendation letters from teachers, and your admissions essays to decide if they want to accept you. You could also take AP tests that were subject-specific, and sometimes colleges would give you class credit for a 4 or a 5 on AP tests (5 being the highest score, and then downwards from there).

Some colleges made kids apply directly to specific programs, which was so weird to me. I went to a liberal arts school. We weren't allowed to choose our concentrations until our 3rd year.

Public and private schools are exactly the same, except that private schools cost money :P All colleges and universities cost money here... and I am going to be paying off my student loans for the next 17 years, so I know way too much about that.

[pensnest]

The 'home room' is a nicely specific name for what I've just called a classroom, or formroom. In England, kids have their own specific formroom throughout - as Primary school pupils they stay in their most of the time, with their own form teacher; by the time they're 15 - 16 the formroom is mostly the place they go to first thing in the morning to have the register taken, and it's quite possible that their form teacher doesn't teach most of the students in that form.

In my Secondary school, our forms were actually named after our rooms. So, I:26 (ie One twenty-six) in my first year at Secondary, thereafter, II:25, III:31, IV:34, V:11. At my Brats' school, the forms were named after the teacher (using his/her initials), and by year number according to the 1 - 13 principle - 7JB, 8PA etc.

Thanks for the explanation - it is remarkable how different the system is.

[carta.livejournal.com]

I have always wondered what A-levels were. There used to be a school in my neighborhood that ran on the British system - the kids who go there have parents who are in the US for a certain amount of time, and going to this school lets the kids stay on track for when they go back home.

Most people leave at 16? That is interesting. We can, I think, but I only knew a couple of kids who did. Most people stuck it out until graduation, but that could just be the city I grew up in.

My school was pretty small - around 500 or so in my high school, less than that for the earlier schools. But my school system was only island kids, so it was a smaller population to begin with.

[pensnest]

I think the current aim is to have about 50% of young adults go to university, so it's not really 'most' leaving at 16, but for some, school is a complete waste of time and they want to go and get a job. The post-16 phase of educational is just optional.

I do get the impression that American high schools are *huge*. They sound quite scary!

[puszysty.livejournal.com]

The size of the school is directly proportionate to the size of the city/town. Not all of them are huge. My high school had less than 400 people in it...my best friend's school had only 100!

I think it's actually illegal to leave school until you're 17 here. Unless you're Amish, they are allowed (and usually do) to quit after 8th grade.

[ninjetti75.livejournal.com]

American education is mostly run at the state level, so it changes depending on where you're attending. In Illinois, attendance is mandatory until 16 years of age, and junior high tends to be 6th-8th grade (11-13 years old, give or take by month of birth), but I know that changed more than a few times just in my parents' lifetimes, though I think it's been stable for more than a few decades, now. But woe to the classes who were about to be the top of the heap at their school...only to have that grade re-assigned to being youngest at the next "high", junior or "senior" high school (which no one EVER calls "senior high", it's just "junior high" and then "high school".)

And yeah, the sizes depend on the local population size. In the west 'burbs of Chicago, my freshman high school class had over a thousand students (less than 350 when I graduated, eep.) But driving to our folks' house in semi-rural Indiana, we pass a sign for the "Tri-County High School", meaning it serves at least a dozen towns. Younger Brother still boggles at it, heh. *g*

[puszysty.livejournal.com]

All this talk of a junior high being the norm...junior high's been phased out in Michigan (at least, I don't know anyone who attended a junior high), and middle school is 5-8th grade.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

Currently people can leave at 16 - the law's already been passed so that the current batch of 11 year olds will stay on to 17, and at some later point it'll go up to 18, with the commensurate changes in the education system filtering into place over the next 5 years to make sure that a wider range of *types* of qualification and types of leearning as well as subjects will be offered, involving more schools in collaborative provision for the 14-19 age group

(Hi, I'm a school governor - can you tell?)

[abishag.livejournal.com]

This is utterly fascinating to me, as I would say something almost entirely different in lots of ways- if I had time, LOL.
Quite apart from anything else, it differs from county to county, if not smaller units. All schools here have sixth-forms with huge percentage retention rate, whereas some places think comprehensives are for 11-16s, and everyone goes to VIth-form college for AS and A levels. And I just can't get my head round a school that stops at 16, like old elementary schools and secondary moderns. Sort of headless, and incomplete...

And nowadays Junior schools (here at least) all have nurseries, and expect kids to start infants earlier, on pain of losing the place, which causes much grumbling.

And every senior school I know of has a uniform - whereas in Junior schools it can't actually be compulsory.

[pensnest]

I know - more complicated, always. But I was probably thinking of the kind of things fanfic writers would need to know, or else the kind of things that I've noticed are likely t be different here.

I think there was a secondary school in Hemel that didn't have a uniform for a while, but they've gone back to having one now. Something that seems utterly sensible and is utterly practical for us - which I think the Americans as a whole find faintly horrifying!

May I (as a completely irrelevant thing) direct you to www.boxmoorplayhouse.co.uk, where you'll find (if you wish) information on our forthcoming 'Iolanthe'? Tickets are on sale!

[abishag.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reminder- we'll certainly work out when we can come and look forward to it.
My remarks weren't meant as a correction- more a musing on the variations and tendency to change over time.
Plaid skirts have nothing on the striped blazers of St Albans High School!
If your US friends can find a news site with the video of it, the coverage of the funeral of the last veteran of two world wars aged 108 gave a very vivid image of school uniform as there were two junior and two senior school pupils in their respective styles laying snowdrops on the coffin, last night on BBC just after I finished typing.

I've noticed tht uniforms seem to continue in countries which adopted the idea from GB in the 19th/early 20th century - Australia, Japan, Singapore, West Indies, South Africa, indeed most of "pink" Africa, whereas Canada as in so much else (eg no cricket) follows the US as the nearer more pwerful counter-influence.

And in many ways the US system is more like continental Europe, due partly to the powerful German influence on US education. PhDs are a German thing. Also no uniforms, and later start on reading/formal education. And teachers being civil servants, though I'm not sure about the position on that in US.

There is one private University - Buckingham, where all the courses are done in two years, without the long vacs.
And my girls' (part boarding) school was rather "like that", whereas OO's grammar school was not really, much more complicated and with more early specialisation.... Though we both had sixth forms. The place I longed to go was the Chalet School, which was so beguilingly different .......

[pensnest]

I kept tripping over things that have changed since I was at school, but of which I have reasonably recent memories because the brats are not long out of school!

I didn't know about Buckingham - interesting, and somehow very odd.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

StA/StB's is the only sixth form in Newham, all the other secondary schools stop at 16, with students mostly going to New Vic College. (which still seems weird to me, but Is True)

[saffronra.livejournal.com]

It does vary a lot from education authority to education authority. Where I did my secondary education, none of the state schools had sixth forms, you had to apply to (and be accepted at) an independent college to do your a-levels.

[pensnest]

The sixth form thing is becoming quite erratic - we have a college here, but most of the schools still go up to 18 all the same. ANd there are variations like 'middle school' here and there too.

[nopseud]

Bradford LEA, and a few other places, have a middle school system (primary - middle school - secondary school), so secondary school is only 13-18. And there are still a few places running the old grammar school system, I think.

[pensnest]

I think there may be middle schools in Beds too, and Bucks has grammar schools. But I didn't want to make phaballa's head explode...

[sarahq.livejournal.com]

This is wonderfully informative. Thanks for writing it all out; it really clarified my hodge-podge understanding of British schools.

One question: it sounds as if your universities are all of one sort. There's a distinction in the U.S. between public universities (which also may be broken into colleges, but are generally quite large and receive state funding, making them less expensive to attend; some are exclusive while others are open to nearly anyone) and private colleges (which are often /much/ smaller, aren't funded by the state and have a tuition several times greater, and, just to confuse matters, can also be called "universities"). I get the impression that your universities have more in common with our state universities?

"Plimsolls" look to be what I would call "Keds", after the main manufacturer over here.

But nowhere near the intimidatingly massive size that American High Schools seem to be.

Oy, yes. My high school had 2,400 students.

[pensnest]

Our universities are all public, as far as I know - at least, I've not heard of any private ones. At any rate, anyone can apply to any of them, and the criteria for getting into one are academic rather than, say, financial. They're not all of one sort, but the distinctions are different from yours!

When I was at university at the end of the 1970s, there were:

- Oxbridge (ie Oxford and Cambridge) and a handful of other very venerable institutions, like Durham and some of the Scottish universities

- 'redbrick' universities like Birmingham, built by philanthropic Victorians

- 'new' universities, generally speaking built in the 1960s.

There were also Polytechnics, as mentioned above, which were intended to provide tertiary education of a more practical, industry-aimed nature. Students still got degrees, but they weren't quite as highly regarded as university degrees. Though the teaching in polys was often rather better than at universities!

These days, polytechnics are now called universities, as are some other educational institutes here and there - there's something that used to be a Business School not far from here, it's now a University, except that by the old definitions, it's nothing of the kind. Very confusing for those school-leavers who are the first generation of their families to try to go to college after leaving school.

[pensnest]

Just to confuse things a little further, people very often refer to 'going to college' as well as 'going to university', although these days the hideous 'uni' is likely to be used instead. :-( Also, usage seems to be changing a bit, in that 'college' may more generally refer to the sixth-form college where A-Levels and their equivalents are taken, which are more common these days than the were in mine.

And, where a university is collegiate - ie Oxford and Cambridge - you tend to mention which college you were at rather than or as well as which university. The colleges are all constituent parts of the university, but are also run individually, with idiosyncrasies of their own. (Mine, for instance, was women-only, and had no chapel.) A bit as though the colleges are states and the university is the national government, possibly? But most universities are not collegiate.

I don't think there's much difference in cost to the students, generally, as the universities almost all charge the maximum in tuition fees that the government allows. Though the cost of living in London is higher than in, say, Norwich, which may be important to some. And I believe it's a bit more expensive to go to Oxford or Cambridge, too. But there isn't a significant differential in fees, the way I think there is in the US.

Student loans (for tuition and for living on) are available to families below a certain income level (which I can't remember), and are a reasonable deal, being at a very generous interest rate. It still seems wrong to me, though, since my generation was actually paid to *go* to university, with tuition being free and a grant towards living expenses made by the student's home local council.

[trumpeterofdoom.livejournal.com]

From a colonial standpoint this is really really interesting. I mean, personally I grew up reading all those Enid Blyton school stories (we'll talk about cultural appropriation and sanitisation and completely clueless racist subtext later) and always wondered what the hell 'fifth form' and the like meant. Conversely it's amazing how within a hundred years or so, the system at home has completely morphed into another beast altogether, though we're still taking our own versions of O and A Levels.

[pensnest]

I have to admit, I never understood the school structure in those School stories... upper IVth and lower Vth and what on earth? Also, I went to a girls' boarding school, and while I enjoyed it enormously, it Wasn't Like That at all!

[puszysty.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting. And so completely different from here. My head's kind of spinning in circles, lol. I find it interesting that they start to teach reading at 5; the american system doesn't start til they're about 6 or 7.
The only time I ever had weekly assembly was when I went to a Catholic school.

[pensnest]

I learned to read when I was three, so the idea of being without books until I was six or seven fills me with horror! But then, my mum was a librarian.

It was quite interesting picking my way through what happened when I was at school and figuring out what happens *now*. It has changed in quite a few particulars!

[puszysty.livejournal.com]

I was 3 when I learned to read as well. When I was in Kindergarten, I remember having to help everyone distribute valentines, because no one else could read the names they'd written on the envelopes.