I’m moving to the UK soon and I tried learning about the education system but it confuses me to the point when I stop thinking and sit in silence because I’m used to elementary and high school (at any age if it’s public school) but I don’t get the year 3 or 10 or levels or these capital letters put together and I wanna cry I’ve never felt this stupid.
Like, I’m in grade 10 and I’m going to London. Do they have textbooks? Can I get them online (for free haha)? I want to study it before going there. Do I choose what I want to learn? Please explain it calmly and in detail dissected please
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You start school in the UK during the first September after your 5th birthday. Typically, kids start at an infants school (kinda like kindergarten in the US). Three years later, kids go to a primary school (sometimes called a junior school) for four years.
Finally you do five years at a more advanced school. These are usually called comprehensive schools (or comps for short) but other arrangements exist, especially for religious and private schools.
*Note that the fanciest schools in the UK are called public schools which are very different from state schools, despite the name. These places cost a lot of money per year.
Grades in the UK are called years. During year nine (the third year of comp) students do exams called SATs. In year 10 and 11 students study for their main qualifications, called GCSEs.
Some GCSEs are mandatory (such as maths and English). You get to pick the rest.
When I left school in 2004 you could quit education at 16. These days, some sort of education is mandatory until 18.
The most common form of post-school education is college, which is kinda like high school in the US, but it’s a bit more like a junior university. Some schools have their own post-16 education department, called a sixth form. Confusingly, some colleges call themselves a sixth form even though they don’t have a school attached to them. Such as the college I attended.
In all the schools I attended, textbooks were provided by the teachers on a lesson-by-lesson basis (i.e, they’d be handed out at the start of lessons and collected at the end). Some additional text books could be bought fairly cheaply.
Lessons usually last one hour. The school day tends to be from 9am to 3 or 4 pm. Many schools finish specifically at 3.20, for some reason.
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