BRITISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Education is important in England.

English children are required by law to have an education until they are 16 years old.

Education is compulsory, but school is not,children are not required to attend school. They could be educated at home.

1996 Education Act of the UK Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act states: "The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable-  to his age, ability and aptitude, and  to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise."

Education is free for all children from 5 to 18.

About 94 per cent of pupils in the UK receive free education from public funds, while 6 per cent attend independent fee paying schools.

Curriculum

All state schools and most private schools follow the National Curriculum which is set up by the Government.

The School Year

The school year is 39 weeks long and is divided into six terms:

•           September to October
•           October to December
•           January to February
•           February to March
•           April to May
•           June to July

School holidays

The main school holidays are:

•           Christmas- 2 weeks
•           Spring - 2 weeks
•           Summer - 6 weeks

There are also one week holidays:

•           end of October
•           mid February
•           end of May

When do kids start school?

In general, children start school on the first day of term after they turn 5.

At the age of 11, they move on to regular high schools, known as secondary schools.

When do kids leave school?

English children are required to attend school until they are 16 years old.

At the age of 16, students write an examination called the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education). All students are tested in mathematics, English literature, English composition, chemistry, biology, physics, history or the Classics, one modern language, and one other subject, such as art or computer studies.

After completing the GCSE, some students leave school, others go onto technical college, whilst others continue at high school for two more years and take a further set of standardized exams, known as A levels, in three or four subjects. These exams determine whether a student is eligible for university.

Further education

Those students who do not wish to follow a degree course may legally leave the school after the age of 16 and start work. In this case they will need a vocational course designed to give them the necessary qualifications. Such courses are available at state-financed further education colleges and independent sixth form colleges. There are over 500 colleges of further education in the UK providing academic, vocational and professional courses.

Education stages:

Children's education in England is normally divided into two separate stages. They begin with primary education at the age of five and this usually lasts until they are eleven. Then they move to secondary school, there they stay until they reach sixteen, seventeen or eighteen years of age.

What different types of schools do you have in England?

Children's education in England is normally divided into two separate stages. They begin with primary education at the age of five and this usually lasts until they are eleven. Then they move to secondary school, there they stay until they reach sixteen, seventeen or eighteen years of age.

The main categories of school are:

•           local authority maintained schools (State Schools). Free to all children between the ages of 5 - 16

 

•           independent schools (Private/Public Schools). Parents pay for their children's education.

State Schools

In the UK 93% of the children in England and Wales go to "state schools". State schools are non fee-paying, funded from taxes and most are organised by Local Authorities (LA).

Parents are expected to make sure that their child has a pen, pencil, ruler etc. but the cost of other more specialised equipment, books, examination fees are covered by the school.

Parents are, however, expected to pay for their child's school uniform and items of sports wear. Charges may also be made for music lessons and for board and lodgings on residential trips. Schools may ask for voluntary contributions for school time activities - but no pupil may be left out of an activity if their parents or guardian cannot or do not contribute.

Primary schools (5 - 11 year olds)

In the UK, the first level of education is known as primary education. These are almost always mixed sex, and usually located close to the child's home. Children tend to be with the same group throughout the day, and one teacher has responsibility for most of the work they do.

Parents are strongly encouraged to help their children, particularly with reading and writing, and small amounts of homework are set to all children, even during the early years at school.

Secondary schools (11 - 16 year olds)

Most children transfer at the age of 11 - usually to their nearest secondary school, though the law allows parents in England and Wales to express preferences for other schools too. A place has to be offered at the parents' preferred school unless the school has more applicants than places; in that case it will admit the children who have the highest priority under its published admission arrangements which can vary a little in different places.

Most secondary schools tend to be much larger than primary schools.

Nearly 88 per cent of secondary school pupils in England go to comprehensive schools, as do all pupils in Wales. These take children of all abilities and provide a wide range of secondary education for all or most of the children in a district from 11 to 16 or 18. All children in Scotland go to non-selective schools.

Grammar Schools are selective, they offer academically oriented general education. Entrance is based on a test of ability, usually at 11 (11+). Grammar schools are single sexed schools i.e. Children either go to a boys Grammar School or a Girls Grammar School. There are grammar schools in Northern Ireland and some parts of England.

Fee Paying Schools - Independent Schools

7% of the children in England go to independent schools. Independent schools are known as private schools and public schools . Parents pay for their children to attend these schools.

Nursery/Kindergarten 2 to 4 years

Pre-preparatory 3 or 4 to 7 years

Preparatory 7 to 11 or 13 years

Public 11 or 13 to 18 years

Prep Schools

A preparatory school is a school to prepare pupils to go to a public school.

Public Schools

A public school is an independent secondary school. Public schools in England are not run by the government. The entrance exams used by most public schools are known as Common Entrance exams and are taken at the age of 11 (girls) or 13 (boys).

The most famous public schools are Eton, Harrow and Winchester.

Higher Education

Around 30% of the 18 to 19 year olds enter full-time higher education. The formal entry requirements to most degree courses are two A-levels at grade E or above.

A degree from a British higher institution is accepted everywhere and is respected throughout the world.

Britain has more than 180 higher education institutions including universities and university sector colleges with the power to devise their own courses and to award their own degrees. They date from different centuries, and all have their unique specialisms and strengths.

Usually studying for the first degree can take three years for an honours degree though some degree courses take four years to complete, and some even more.

Students with good degrees can go on to a postgraduate or higher degree.

 

 

 

 

Oxford

 

Oxford lies about 57 miles (90 km) north-west of London. A medium-sized city with a total population of some 140,000 people, including over 30,000 students, Oxford has a lively atmosphere, with a wealth of cultural, recreational and sports facilities.

 

Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and lays claim to nine centuries of continuous existence. As an international centre for teaching and research, Oxford attracts students and scholars from across the globe, with almost a quarter of students from overseas. More than 130 nationalities are represented among a student population of over 18,000.

Oxford is a collegiate university, with 39 self-governing colleges related to the University in a type of federal system.

Oxford is a historic and unique institution. It is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. There is no clear date of foundation, but teaching existed at Oxford in some form in 1096 and developed rapidly from 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris.

From 1878, academic halls were established for women, who became members of the University in 1920. Since 1974, all but one of Oxford's 39 colleges have changed their statutes to admit both men and women. St Hilda's remains the only women's college.

                                                                  

Colleges

•      select and admit undergraduate students, and select graduate students after they are admitted by the University;
•      provide accommodation, meals, common rooms, libraries, sports and social facilities for their students;
•      are responsible for students' tutorial teaching and welfare.

The University

•      determines the content of the courses within which college teaching takes place;
•      organises lectures and seminars;
•      provides a wide range of resources for teaching and learning in the form of libraries, laboratories, museums, computing facilities, etc;
•      admits and supervises graduate students, examines theses;
•      sets and marks examinations;
•      awards degrees.

 

Undergraduate courses offer students the chance to study their chosen field in depth, whilst a range of options allows for a wide spread of special interests. Oxford offers undergraduates a unique learning experience through the tutorial system, in which students meet regularly with their college tutor, either on a one-to-one basis or with one or two other students, as an integral part of the pedagogic mix. Programmes of study aim to make students think logically and independently.

Graduate students are a valued part of the University, and make up around a third of the total student body. The University offers a wide range of taught graduate and research degrees, ranging from one to three or more years in length.

The University particularly values the role of international students in providing intellectual stimulation and in creating and maintaining academic links with colleagues abroad. Over a quarter of our student body comes from outside the United Kingdom, and a range of scholarships offer support for international students.

As one of the leading international universities, Oxford also attracts scholars from all over the world to join its teaching and research staff, and collaborates with over 80 research institutions worldwide, including establishments in the Far East, India, South Africa, the USA and Latin America.

 

 

 

British Scientists

 

ADAMS, JOHN C. John Couch Adams (1819-1892) was an English astronomer and mathematician who, at 24 years old, predicted the existence of the planet Neptune.

 

AIRY, GEORGE Sir George Bidell Airy (1801-1892) was the director of Greenwich Observatory/Astronomer Royal of England from 1835 to 1881. Airy installed a transit (a precise surveying device) at Greenwich, England, which was used to define the zero degree meridian of the Earth.

 

ANNING, MARY Mary Anning (1799-1847) was an early British fossil hunter who began finding fossils as a child, and supported herself and her family by finding and selling fossils. She lived on the southern coast of England, in Lyme Regis. Anning found the first fossilized plesiosaur and Ichthyosaurus. She found many important fossils, including Pterodactylus, sharks, and many other reptiles and fish. Babbage, Charles born Dec. 26, 1791, London, Eng., died Oct. 18, 1871, London British mathematician and inventor. Educated at Cambridge University, he devoted himself from about 1812 to devising machines capable of calculating mathematical tables. His first small calculator could perform certain computations to eight decimals. In 1823 he obtained government support for the design of a projected machine with a 20-decimal capacity. In the 1830s he developed plans for the so-called Analytical Engine, capable of performing any arithmetical operation on the basis of instructions from punched cards, a memory unit in which to store numbers, sequential control, and most of the other basic elements of the present-day computer. The forerunner of the modern digital computer, the Analytical Engine was never completed.

 

BELL, JOCELYN Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943- ) is an astronomer who discovered the existence of pulsars in 1967, while she was a graduate student at Cambridge University. A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star that emits energy in pulses. Bell's graduate advisor (Anthony Hewish) was given a share of the 1974 Nobel Prize, but Bell was ignored. No one had any idea what these unusual objects were at the time, so the name little green men (LGM) was used.

 

BUCKLAND, WILLIAM William Buckland (1784-1856) was a British fossil hunter who discovered Megalosaurus in 1819 and named it in 1824. It was the first dinosaur ever described scientifically and the first theropod dinosaur discovered (theropods were the meat-eating dinosaurs). Buckland always collected his fossils in a large blue bag, which he carried around most of the time.

 

CAVENDISH, HENRY Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) was an English chemist and physicist. Cavendish discovered that hydrogen gas was a substance different from ordinary air (whose components he analyzed), he described the composition of water (hydrogen and oxygen) and made other important discoveries. Cavendish was the first person to determine Isaac Newton's gravitational constant and accurately measured the Earth's mass and density.

 

DARWIN, CHARLES R. Charles Robert Darwin (February 12, 1809-April 19, 1882) was an English naturalist who revolutionized scientific thought with the theory of evolution and natural selection. After studying at Cambridge University, Darwin served as naturalist on the ship HMS Beagle (captained by Robert Fitzroy) during its five-year voyage around the world traveling west ( December 27, 1831-October 2, 1836). On this trip, Darwin studied a tremendous variety of plant and animal life. Darwin's book called "On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle of Life" was published in November 24, 1859 (and sold out in one day). This world-shaking book outlined the gradual change in a species from generation to generation through natural selection. In 1871, Darwin published "The Descent of Man," which focused on the origins of people. The theory of evolution has been debated since it was proposed, but most scientists accept evolution and natural selection as the method of species formation and the foundation of biology.

 

EDDINGTON, ARTHUR Arthur Eddington (1882-1945) was an English astronomer who first described the internal structure of a star.

 

GREGORY, JAMES James Gregory (1638-1675), a Scottish mathematician, invented the first reflecting telescope in 1663. He published a description of the reflecting telescope in "Optica Promota," which was published in 1663. He never actually made the telescope, which was to have used a parabolic and an ellipsoidal mirror.

 

HADLEY, JOHN H. John Hadley (1682-1744) was an English mathematician and inventor who built the first reflecting telescope and invented an improved quadrant (known as Hadley's quadrant).

 

HALLEY, EDMUND Edmund Halley (1656-1742) was an English astronomer who predicted the return of a spectacular comet in 1758. This comet had previously been seen in 1531, 1607, and 1682. This comet is now known as Halley's Comet.

 

HAWKING, STEPHEN Stephen Hawking (1942- ) is a British physicist and cosmologist. His work centers on the physics of black holes. Hawking (1971) proposed that early after the Big Bang, mini-black holes existed. Hawking (1974) hypothesized that black holes emit subatomic particles until they explode.

 

HAWKINS, BENJAMIN W. The first dinosaur models were made by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins of England in 1854. He made and sold plaster-cast dinosaurs through the Ward's catalogue of scientific supplies. His original models included Igauanodon, Hylaeosaurus, Megalosaurus, Plesiosaurus and Ichthyosurus. The first dinosaur used for adult amusement was a life-size model of an Iguanodon (made of concrete by Hawkins) that was used to house a dinner party for scientists (including Richard Owen, who coined the term dinosaur) at a major exhibition in London, England, in 1854. The invitations to the party were sent on fake pterodactyl wings.

 

HERSCHEL, WILLIAM Sir William Herschel (1738-1822) was a British astronomer and organist who built an improved reflecting telescope and used it to discover the planet Uranus (March 13, 1781) and moons of Uranus and of Saturn. Herschel's sister Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848) helped him in his discoveries.

 

HUGGINS, WILLIAM and MARGARET Sir William Huggins (February 7, 1824-May 12, 1910) was an amateur English astronomer. He determined that the Sun and the stars are composed mostly of the element hydrogen.

 

HOLMES, ARTHUR Arthur Holmes (1890 - 1965) was a British geologist who first proposed the idea of a geologic time scale in 1913. Holmes estimated that the Earth was about 4 billion years old - this was much greater than previously believed.

 

HUXLEY, THOMAS H. Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) was a British scientist and friend of Charles Darwin. He was the first scientist to notice the similarity between birds and dinosaurs.

 

KELVIN Lord Kelvin, William Thompson (1824 - 1907) designed the Kelvin temperature scale in which 0 K is defined as absolute zero and the size of one unit is the same as the size of one degree Celsius. Water freezes at 273.16 K; water boils at 373.16 K.

 

LASSELL, WILLIAM William Lassell was an amateur English astronomer who discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune (in 1846) and Ariel, the brightest moon of Uranus in 1851. With W.C. Bond, he discovered Saturn's moon Hyperion in 1848.

 

MANTELL, GIDEON Gideon A. Mantell (1790-1852) was an amateur British fossil hunter, one of the first in the world. This physician named Hylaeosaurus (1833), Iguanodon (1825), Pelorosaurus (1850), and Regnosaurus (1848). Mary Ann Mantell, his wife, is commonly thought to have found the first Iguanodon tooth in 1822; there is no substantiation to this story, however.

 

MOORE, PATRICK Patrick Moore (1923- ) is an English astronomer who has written over 60 books on astronomy and made regular BBC television appearances popularizing astronomy. He has done work on lunar mapping.

 

NEWTON, ISAAC Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was an English mathematician and physicist who formulated the laws of gravitation, investigated the nature of light (he discovered that sunlight is made of light of different colors), and the laws of motion. Newton also improved the design of the refracting telescope (using an objective mirror, instead of a lens), and it is now called a Newtonian telescope.

 

Nurse, Sir Paul M. born Jan. 25, 1949, Norwich, Norfolk, Eng. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia in 1973 and was a professor at the University of Oxford from 1987 to 1993. In 1996 he was named director general of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK). In the mid-1970s he conducted research on yeast and discovered the gene that regulates different phases of the cell cycle. He later found the corresponding gene in humans. His work aided in the understanding of cancer cell development. Nurse shared a Nobel Prize with R. Timothy Hunt and Leland H. Hartwell in 2001.

 

OWEN, RICHARD Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892) was a pioneering British comparative anatomist who coined the term dinosauria (from the Greek "deinos" meaning terrible, and "sauros" meaning lizard), recognizing them as a suborder of large, extinct reptiles in 1842.

 

THOMPSON, J. J. Joseph John Thompson was a British scientist who discovered the existence of the electron in 1897. Electrons are tiny, negatively-charged atomic particles. In an atom, they orbit around the nucleus.

 

WRIGHT, THOMAS Thomas Wright (1711-1786) was a British cosmologist. Wright was one of the first people (along with Johann Lambert (1728-77) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) ) who in 1750 speculated about the structure and origin of our solar system and galaxy. Using religious and philosophical arguments, Wright hypothesized that the Milky Way was a thin flat system of stars with our solar system near the center and that there were other similar but distant star systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. What is compulsory school age in Great Britain?
2. Is school attendance required in Great Britain?
3. Who sets up the National Curriculum?
4. When do teachers start setting homework to children?
5. What is the GCSE? What subjects are tested?
6. What do students do after completing the GCSE?
7. What are the two stages of education in England? At what age does the first stagwe finish?
8. Who maintains state schools?
9. What do parents of children who go to state schools pay for?
10. How are comprehensive schools different from state schools?
11. In what parts of Great Britain are there grammar schools?
12. What is 11+?
13. What are two other names for independent schools?
14. What are A-levels? When do students need them?
15. How long do students study to get their first university degree?
16. Where is Oxford situated?
17. How old is the University in Oxford?
18. What event influenced the development of the university?
19. When did women become members of the university?
20. How many colleges are there in Oxford?
21. What are colleges' responsibilities?
22. What are the university's responsibilities?
23. What do you know about the tutorial system?
24. Can students from overseas enter the university?