Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-33154547-20150126113820/@comment-5949826-20150515141641

Sean4333 wrote:

To avoid further confusion, I'll explain the 'Murican way. In the US, there are three forms of mandatory school. When you're six, you go to Kindergarten, which is either connected to an Elementary School or seperate.

The next year you begin First Grade, the first stage of "real" school. Here's when you start Elementary School. Elementary is usually Grades 1-5, though I've heard of one that went up to 6th. In this school you'll generally have one teacher and one class for all subjects. It ends when you're about 11.

Then Middle School (Or Junior High as some call it) begins. This lasts either 6th-8th or 7th-8th depending on the Elementary school. Here you'll have lockers and multiple classes and teachers for different subjects. That ends in 8th Grade, when you're about 14.

Finally High School beings, which lasts 9th-12th always. It's basically Middle School in format, but much more challenging and with more class options to prepare for college. It ends in 12th Grade, when one's 18.

Then College begins. Just like in every other country, that varies per profession. So there you go, the US education system. Okay let me sum up the UK system as a contrast. (bear in mind I don't know exactly how the first half works since I was homeschooled and didn't live in the UK at the time haha)

I'm fairly certain though that Kindergarden works the same way except it's called Nursery. Then we have Primary school, which is from Year 1 through to 6. Ages similar - it goes up until aged 10-11.

We don't have a separate school like middle to high school, we have a combined Secondary School. This occupies years 7-11, or ages 11/12 until 16. This is similar to both high school and middle school in that we have lockers and multiple classes and all.

The whole system is subdivided into Key Stages. Key Stage 1 and 2 are the parts of the curriculum to be taught in primary school. Key Stage 3 is from Years 7-9 and Key Stage 4 is from Years 9-11. It basically means how in depth into a subject you study, e.g. Key stage 3 science is more general whereas by KS4 it becomes separated into biology, chemistry and physics.

After Secondary school, we gan go on to doing Sixth Form College. This counts as Years 12-13, and students are aged 17-18 on average. Sixth Form students do a lot less subjects but often the difficulty of the course can be more than university's first year courses. Nothing is simplified here - it's proper academics. Some schools provide 4-5 subjects but my school now makes each student take 4 in Year 12 and we have the option of dropping one of those subjects to take only 3 overall in Year 13. Time tables no longer have lessons every period - we have unsupervised 'study' periods as well as free periods where we can just chill in a common room, kinda like in Harry Potter. (except minus wands and its not a boarding school lol)

Then you can go on and get a job or go to university to get a degree, which again varies per profession as you said. Universities will accept people with good A-level (Sixth Form) grades in subjects pertaining to the courses you want to study, so for example a course in Medecine might require you to get an AAB minimum  where two of those grades have to be in science subjects, and where one of those has to be biology or chemistry. (As an example)

@Coolbuddy: I believe the Indian education system is very similar to the British one, so you'll probably recognise what I wrote above. ;)