ONe thing that gets posted fairly frequently in communities such as
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fanficrants is High School AUs. The ones that are usually ranted about are by American and are for anime fandoms, usually set in Japan. These rants point out that the American and Japanese education systems are not the same. On occasion it also gets pointed out that other countries have different education systems and cultures to America. This is true.
Now in my main fandom (Harry Potter) I've seen very few High School AUs and the ones I have seen were pretty were done. However that doesn't mean there aren't lots of them. One the contrary, a quick search of FFNet gave me 184 results for the phrase 'high school' specifically for HP, and I haven't checked the other British fandoms. Many of those may be well done, but I don't have it in me to check, and I seriously doubt they would have taken much of the English Education System into consideration, let alone the Scottish and Irish ones.
So I'm going to give a little overview of the English education system. Sadly I know nothing about the Scottish and Irish ones beyond that they're different to the English one, and I don't even know if the Welsh one is the same or not. But I'm sure you could find that information if you looked hard enough - in the links post from earlier there's bound to be some information about it, and there are forums where you can ask.
That being said, let's get on with it.
School AgesThis is pretty simple really. It is the ages you attend school. I believe this is pretty much standardised, but if something's wrong then it's down to regional variations.
To start with we have the 'cut off date'. This isn't the official name, but I'm referring to the dates which decide what year you are part of, so if you are born after a certain date you are in one year, but if you are born before you are in the year above.
In England, as far as I know, this date is 31st August.
I know, I explained that badly, so here's an example:
I was born on 3rd March 1990. That placed me firmly in my year. However I have a friend who I shall refer to as Smithers to protect his identity. Smithers was born 31st August 1989. This placed Smithers in the year above me, but only by a few hours. I have another friend, who I shall call K, who was born on 1st September 1990. This placed her in the year below, but only by a matter of hours. Even though I was born about 6 months between each of them, all 3 of us are in different school years.
Got that? Good.
Now we start school at 4 years old, meaning we have to be 4 years old to start school. Before that we have Nursery School or Play School, both of which are voluntary and are more childcare/pre-school environments.
At the opposite end, we have school leaving ages.Legally we are required to attend school until the end of the school year 11, which is the year we turn 16. After that everything is optional, although the government is going to change this so that education is compulsory until age 18.
The School YearsCompulsory Years4-5 years: Reception
5-6 years: Year 1
6-7 years: Year 2
7-8 years: Year 3
8-9 years: Year 4
9-10 years: Year 5
10-11 years: Year 6
11-12 years: Year 7
12-13 years: Year 8
13-14 years: Year 9
14-15 years: Year 10
15-16 years: Year 11
The above are the ares of each year group, after which compulsory education stops. Of course this is rather... simplified.
For starters, I haven't split them into Primary and Secondary schools, or anything similar. That makes it slightly more complex as you have to account for regional variations, as well as variations from school to school, but I'll try my best.
Primary SchoolsReception through the Year 6 are usually lumped together as Primary School. Each class has their own room which they do not move from, and only one teacher for the most part. Why for the most part? Well, my Reception was a little odd, as there were 2 classes of us, they assigned half of the students out of each class to Red Group and the other to Blue Group, and each group was taught each day by one of the teachers. But bear in mind that's just a plain old anecdote and doesn't represent the majority of schools.
However the Primary school label doesn't apply to all schools. On occasion you come across Infant Schools (for Reception and Years 1 and 2), and then Junior School for Years 3-6. Other Primary Schools still will complicate again by referring to Reception through to Year 2 as Lower School, Years 3 and 4 as Middle School and Years 5 and 6 as Upper School, as mine did, though I think this is pretty rare (actually I think my school was the only one in the area that did...)
Primary schools may mix each class group us each year, or they may keep them the same all the way through the students time at the school unless there are major problems. Either is fine, and personally I wouldn't say ether method is better than the other.
Secondary SchoolOkay, your character has made it through Primary School or whatever the school calls it. The next lot is secondary school.
Without getting into the whole public/private/state school thing (will be explained later) there are 2 basic types of Secondary School (we'll ignore the anomalies like my own for now).
First you have those that allow students to carry on their education passed the age of 16 with them, and then you have those who don't. Either way they usually chuck Years 7-11 on the same campus in the same areas, though no 2 years are in the same Form/Tutor Group (which is simply the group we have some lessons with, go to registration with and assemblies with). Form/Tutor Groups normally stay the throughout Years 7-11 (except for the anomalous schools). Secondary Schools are often called Comprehensives or High Schools (Stonewall High, for example)
My school and a few others in my area are what I've called the Anomalous Schools. I know of very few other places that are like this, but it's pretty simple.
In these schools the first 3 years of Secondary Education is spent in one school which in my experience catered for the village the school was in and the nearest one. For Years 10 and 11 the students all go off to another school which accepts the students from nearby villages (maybe 2 schools, and students from 4 villages on average). In my case the school I went to for years 7-9 was called a High School, and then I went off to the Community College for Years 10 and 11. Confusingly both were on the same campus, but were separate schools and had separate names, having little to do with one another (except to borrow rooms for exams, and when the High School borrowed the Comminity College's Swimming Pool).
But, like I said, those schools are anomalies.
Post-16 EducationPost-16 Education is, as I've mentioned, voluntary. In Year 11 students have to choose what they'll do after their exams. They can choose to get a job, go into an apprenticeship, or go into NVQ's and A Levels, all of which I'll probably explain in detail in the future.
Students aged 16-19 are collectively known as the Sixth Form. This stems back from when Year 7 was First form, and each following year was the nth Form. We got rid of that, but Sixth Form remains.
Sixth forms can be attached to a secondary school, or a completely separate school. If the Sixth Form is part of another school then often the school has a separate area for the Sixth Form to spend their Break and Lunch times if they so wish, sometimes called the Sixth Form Centre (Ingenius eh? We'll leave out individual school's names for it though).
In some schools the Sixth Form is divided into the Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth. The Lower Sixth are the students taking their AS Levels, whilst the Upper are taking their A2 Levels. Of course, this isn't true for all schools.
A lot of schools won't use the Upper and Lower Sixths. Mine uses Years 12 and 13, and for a few people each year, Year 14, and this is true for many schools. Year 12 refers to a students first year in Sixth Form, 13 their second and 14 their possible third. People only enter Year 14 if they failed their exams for one/all subjects, or decided at the end of Year 12 that the subjects they chose weren't for them.
During their last year of A Levels students can apply for University, and usually do so using a service called UCAS. I'll have only gotten to this stage in September, so I can't exactly say a lot about it right now, but basically students use it to find a course they wish to do at a university, and use that form to send out an application that's standardised to them to those Universities. They're then accepted or not, and if a student gets the right marks on their A2 exams they can go off to uni. If not they have to go through clearing (ringing up universities to find out if they could be accepted there instead).
And all that is just the bare bones of English Education before University, without even going into the subjects, exams and qualifications, let alone anything else. They'll come at a later date.
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