Educational Systems

[Sophia]

Just for my own curiosity, a brief poll of sorts, as we seem to have a pretty international audience-- how does the education system work in your country? What are the grade levels, what are they called, and how old are the kids who usually take them?

I'll start, and do the American system as an example--

The lowest level is kindergarten at age 5, which is technically optional, but I think most kids go. 1st grade is age 6, and so on, up through 12th grade which you usually finish at age 17 or 18.

Grades are usually divided as K-5 or K-6 is elementary school, 6-8 or 7-8 is middle school or jr. high, and 9-12 is high school.

[Ameena]

English schools, you start at ummm age four I think...in Reception class. Then you enter Year One. These and Year Two are Infant School, then years 3-6 are Junior School (the whold first six years is Primary School). Age 11 you go up to Secondary School for years 7-11. During Years 10 and 11 you take your GCSEs, finishing at age 16. Sixth Form (Years 12-13) is optional.
Oh, and after that, I may as well mention, you can go into college or Uni or whatever if you so choose.

[Trantor]

In Germany, Kindergarten is optional as well, but most kids go there. It goes from age 3 to 6, though not every child enters at 3. Then Elementary School kicks in at age 6 (sometimes 7) and covers the first four grades. From grade 5 on, there are three different types of school, depending on the skills of the child: the Hauptschule, which ends after grade 9 (about 15-16), the Realschule, which ends after grade 10 (16-17), and the Gymnasium, which ends either after grade 12 (East Germany, former GDR) or 13 (West Germany), so the people who finish the Gymnasium are 18-20. There are also several other types of schools, most notably some schools in-between the Realschule and the Gymnasium, usually only covering the grades 11-12 or 11-13. If you want to go to University, you usually have to finish the Gymnasium, though several of the "in-between-schools" enable you to study certain subjects at certain universities.

[cowsmanaut]

Canada is a mess of different requirements. Quebec, ontario, BC as near as I can tell have varied ideals of what goes on when.

When doing school in ontario I had different prerequisite courses i needed to take from when I came back to BC to catch a few missed prereq's. When in ontaio we had basic, general, and advanced levels for every course. If you completed the advanced level you could go on to OAC which were the ontaio academic courses which were sort of like grade 13. I chose to take those for Chemistry and biology. The are supposedly equivilent to first year College and used to prep students for University level courses to make the transition easier.

In BC it stops at grade 12, and the prereq's are different too.. like home eccenomics. BC also has this thing called a GED.. which is kind of like .. I didn't finish school but I want to have my diploma.. which sadly despite having grade 13 level education.. missing a required course like history 11 and physics 12 for me meant going and getting this GED because there was no way to transfer.. messed up punk @$$ school systems.. The GED is even more insulting that you need to only have a 45% to pass it. Most of the questions about history are american also since the texts provided are from the US. So my oppinion of highschool here in BC is not so high.

In quebec, you have the normal classes up to grade 12 but the have a seperate year after in a completely different school that is pre university. So again.. a sort of grade 13. However, in ontario your grade 13 was in the same school you studied in.

When you get to college though or university.. things become a whole other ball of wax and the govenment doesn't have the same say in what we teach.. there are general rules to adhere to, however there is more lenience in how we deliver classes. This means that any college or university in Canada could be good or bad depending on the faculty present in the course you wish to take.

as for teachers.. don't even get me started..

[Des]

In the UK there have been a number of changes over the years. The biggest one was the introduction of "Comprehensive" education in the 1960s. It was a sort of one-size-fits-all system which largely replaced the old two-tier grammar / secondary modern system. It was big improvement for many and meant much better opportunities for children from poor families, though some elitist schools remained.

Unfortunately over the years Comprehensive schools gradually declined in effectiveness and over the last 20 years various measures (league tables, technology colleges and others) have been tried to improve educational attainment. Though not all successful, there has been steady improvement in results. Faith Schools (e.g. Moslem, Catholic etc.) have also become more common.

There has also been a big shake-up in further education (18+). There used to a two-tier system in that too where Universities were for the privileged few and Polytechnics were for the rest. These were all merged into a larger pool of Universities and the numbers of people going for higher education also increased dramatically. The downside of this is that it could no longer be funded fully from taxation - students have to take out loans and pay fees. When I went to university in the 80s I got a maintenance grant and all fees paid by the Government.

Students seem to be a lot more serious as well these days. When I did my degree it was like a holiday camp and you only really had to do serious amounts of work in the final year. I managed an Atilla*.

* Geoff (Hurst) = First (class)
Atilla (the Hun) = Two-one (upper second class)
Desmond (Tutu) = Two-two (lower second class)
Dougland (Hurd) = Third (class)

[zoom]

In Germany there have been some changes going on in the past years, like deleting the 13th year in gymnasium. Many protests.The thing is, they/we did not do well in a PISA test or so and now they want to blame something - the system. I think they are going to incorporate some parts from sweden in to the school setup soon and look at UK or America likewise for successful education programmes.(sweden or finnland do not have translations for tv. This way they either read well or understand english well)
One of these changes I talked about in the beginning also include to let children in the kindergarten learn (like in UK?) foreign languages- i.e. at very low difficulty ..the brain of a child (normally) has until the 5th year of life the feature to speak accent free languages and learn rapidly fast. They want to use that life phase for learning/getting children to start having interest in , e.g. science or to see what the children could be good at individually.
If that was too complicated nevermind. blame my time zone.
Ah yeah, there is also some differences in the different parts of Germany(Laender). there are some, and bavaria, where I live has the strictest schools and did better in PISA - yet still crappy . It is not easy to get a consensus on education with all these different Laenders.

[Adamo]

aww in germany you can study FOR FREE as long as you want to ! I wish the same situation was in Poland, but it depends of a university here: in mine university the education normally last 5 years, but you can study only 6 years for free; after that, you have to pay (about 1000 E for a year, depends what you study). So when you`re studying 7 years, you have to pay for the last year !!

[zoom]

You do not really think that "we can study FOR FREE as long as [we] want to "!???? It is the same here like at your place Adamo.
If you take too long you have to pay. And there is even some talk about introducing some additional payment for "beginning" students. Many protests...not everybody could afford studying then, esp. foreigners without support or poor families...

[linflas]

French school system is quite similar to other countries :
- from age 3 to 5 this is nursery school where kids learn how to talk, they play, sing, paint, etc.
- at 6 they go to first class : read, write and count (i didn't go to this class because my mom was my teacher at home when i was 5 ).
- from 7 to 10, pupils have 4 years of Elementary School with the same teacher for all disciplines (where english has been recently added btw).
- from 11 to 14, this is "Collège" : classes are named in descending order (6th, 5th, 4th, 3th) and you have one teacher per discipline.
- there's a compulsory GCSEs ("Brevet des collèges") before 15, but you don't need to pass it to go to the next class
- from 15 to 18, this is "Lycée" with 3 classes named "seconde", "première" and "terminale". Lycées are state secondary schools where pupils study for their "baccalauréat", the big diploma before...
- University (from 2 to 5 years) or 2 years of classes which prepare students to "Grandes Ecoles" : these schools are prestigious higher education institutes with competitive entrance examination.

Personally, I stopped studies after 4 years at University.

[Gambit37]

At 6 they go to read, write and count?

Myself and all my brothers and sisters could read, write and count before age five. 6 is leaving things a bit late in my opinion -- no wonder the general level of intelligence/awareness is going down, kids just aren't being challenged early enough. But it's also reflective of the difference between parents who educate their children at home from an early age and those who don't bother and leave it to school to give them the initial basics.

I personally find it unforgivable that any child should start school without rudimentary basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.

[linflas]

oh sorry, that wasn't clear...
of course in french nursery school, kids are taught for reading, writing and counting but these aren't exactly "lessons". Real school starts at 6, with A,B,Cs or notes from 0 to 10 !

anyway i agree with you Gambit, many kids and even adults have huge gaps nowadays, especially in grammar and spelling.

and let's not talk about "SMS language"...

[Des]

Opinion is divided about when small children should start formal education - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/1111663.stm

[bitza]

With regard to the English schooling System, in most areas, Junior Schools (sometimes called Middle Schools, have largely been phased out, at least in South Yorkshire, in favour of Primary and Secondary schools. The lower two years of the middle school have been merged with the primary school, and the upper two years merged with the secondary school (if that makes sense). Also, there is a growing trend for 'failing' Secondary schools to be replaced with Academies, eg in my local town, the Grammar school has been replaced by Trinity Academy, designed to emphasise the education standard. Although, in poitn of fact, the Academy's GCSE Results this year were a pass rate of 34%, which was actually lower than the 'Failing' School it replaced (although, to be fair, it has only been open for 1 full academic year.).

Hope this makes sense. Ifit sounds confusing, don't worry, it is!

[Gambit37]

Opinion is divided about when small children should start formal education - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/1111663.stm

I should make it clear that I was in no way suggesting early formal education is essential but that I would expect any child of reception class age to be able to handle the basics of reading and writing through creative play that they should have been taught at home.