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.