More UK education structure.

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 188283

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince" <catlady at ...> wrote:

Catlady: 
> Used to be that UK listies were always hollering at US listies that there are no high school graduation ceremonies in the UK. No kind of school leaving ceremony except an extracurricular School Leavers Ball, described by someone who was going through it at time of writing as a crappy disco.

Geoff:
No indeed. In the UK. Graduation refers specifically to a presentation 
ceremony at the end of a higher education course such as a college 
or a university. Some schools have in recent years started to have a 
closing evening occasion of some description.

Geoff  (earlier): 
> << Courses which are specifically geared to an area such as catering or business skills or motor mechanics, for example, will usual run as continuation courses from ordinary secondary schools and take place in Colleges of Further Education - either post-Year 11 or post-Sixth Form. They are sub-university and may either act as a precursor to taking a full degree or issue vocational qualifications in their own right. >>

Catlady: 
> Now remind me what is Year 11. Is it Fifth Form? GSCE year?

Geoff:
I have written about this in the past but could not immediately 
track the post in my archive so I had better start again.

If you go back 40 years or so, the naming system was fairly simple.
In the state schools, education up to the age of 11 was covered by 
Infant schools and Junior schools. these were sometimes combined 
on the same site and had class names straight through from Class 1 
to Class 6 (or possibly 'Year' instead of 'Class'). If the schools were 
separate, then they might have individual numbers.

All pupils transferred to Secondary education at 11+ and the classes 
from there up to the national exams were invariably First Year to Fifth 
Year. Beyond this you went into First Year Sixth/Second Year Sixth or 
Lower Sixth/Upper Sixth. These latter titles still survive. Public schools
used the same nomenclature despite their senior entry level being into 
Third Year.

I referred to the Labour Government's 1965 plan to introduce a plan
for comprehensive schools in a post a day or so ago. One of the c
consequences of this was that some Local Education Authorities (LEAs)
decided that the easiest way to implement this in terms of costs and 
buildings was to move to a Middle school system. which had First 
schools for 5-9 year olds, Middle schools for 9+-13 year olds and 
13+ in High schools/Community Colleges as the most widely adopted 
schemes. On the other hand some LEAs retained the old age breaks.

Obviously, the LEA covering Little Whinging had stayed with the old 
arrangement.

The area where I taught, close to Wimbledon, went to Middle schools and 
we then had the oddity of Middle school pupils coming to us from Fourth 
Year and entering our Third Year. The old Year numbers were retained
because you might get a student moving from a traditional school area
to a Middle school area and it helped continuity of courses, especially 
near national exams such as GCSE.

In the end the Ministry bit the bullet and round about 1990, classes were 
renamed Year 1 right up to Year 11 in a continuous list. JKR makes 
Hogwarts a little behind the times in retaining the old names certainly 
into the mid-1990s. I think I am right that this roughly corresponds to 
the US Grade numbering?

End of lecture.
:-)