Education reference for parents in other countries

[nospam99]

On yet another day of boredom, I was considering that we at LS are 'international'. Parents sometimes post about issues involving formal education. For example, as a 'murcan, I don't 'get' the details when a UK resident posts about 'uni'. And the details may differ again in other countries. In the interest of 'splaining' a bit to non-USA types, I here submit some reference details about education in the US. Folks from other lands (I admit curiosity about the UK) may want to add their stuff. Mods may want to pin this if people think it's sufficiently valuable.

Public education is paid for by citizens via taxation. You pay whether or not you have kids. Public education is administered at the local level as an entity called a school district.

The school year starts in early September and runs until close to the end of June. The kids are 4 or 5 years old, depending on where their birthday falls within the year on their first day of Kindergarten. Kindergarten may be skipped and is followed by twelve years designated Grades 1 through 12. Grades 1 through 6 are usually called elementary school, Grades 7 and 8, junior high, and Grades 9 through 12 high school. There are variations, for example intermediate schools with some range of grades from 5 to 9. Students who complete one grade each year complete public education when they graduate from high school (regarded as a life milestone) at age 17 or 18.

Parents have the option of paying tuition to send their children to private school, usually because they regard the educational experience there as superior to the local public school. They may also education their children themselves, called home schooling. Many private schools, called parochial schools, are run by a recognized religion. In the US, the Roman Catholic Church has a long tradition of running parochial schools.

High school graduates next enter the military or the workforce or continue their education at a trade school, community or junior (2-year) college, 4-year college, or university. Many industrial and manufacturing employers provide On the Job training (OJT). Students entering the workforce in the construction or mechanical trades may continue their training as an apprentice in a trade union. Trade schools offer similar training in construction and mechanical trades.

The school year for formal higher education usually begins the last week of August and ends in May. 2-year colleges graduate their students with an Associate's degree, 4-year colleges with a Bachelor's degree. Associate degree holders, typically 19 or 20 years old at that point, may transfer to 4-year schools, continuing as 3rd year students. Many 4-year colleges offer programs for Master's degrees, the lowest professional or 'advanced' degree. Typical Master's degree programs run for one or two years. An institution offering 4-year degrees, Master's degrees, and programs leading to higher advanced degrees, for example Doctorates, usually calls itself a university.

There are also institutions of higher education devoted to specific advanced degrees in fields such as medicine, law, dentistry, and other health care specializations. Credentialed nursing programs may be offered starting at the junior college level.

Programs of study in specific fields may only be available at a limited number of select institutions so a student interested in those fields may nee to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to continue their education.

[Ollie180]

I can play at a few of these of it interests you...

starting at home, U.K. 🇬🇧:

Primary school: years 1-6 (age 5 to 11). Free unless parents choose to pay for private

Secondary school: years 7-11 (age 12-16). Free unless parents choose to pay for private. Year 11’s will sit their final GCSE exams .

College: Ages 16-18. didn’t used to be compulsory in my day, but now is (only other option is for students to start an gov approved apprenticeship - learning on the job) Funded by the state (as long as you aren’t over ..19 I think). 
more relaxed than school. There’s different options but generally you can choose conventional subjects and sit A levels, or choose more ‘practical subjects’ (Sport, beauty, agriculture, adventure, horses) and achieve a BTEC.

Uni: Any age, but generally 18-21. Most courses are 3 years, unless it’s like medicine etc. You can stay longer and do a ‘masters’ if you choose. You have to pay for this, it’s normally 9 grand a year, but you can get a student loan from the gov where you only pay back a % of your earnings IF you earn over a certain amount. Uni normally involves moving away from home.

 

Mozambique 🇲🇿:

Lower Primary: Starts age 6 (grade1 to grade 5)

Upper Primary: (grade 6-7) 

Up to age 12 this is ‘free and compulsory’, except they have to pay an annual like joining fee, which you can get waived for low income families who could afford it. And except there is(at least was) a lack of teachers/schools in some parts!

Secondary education: You have junior secondary: (Grades 8 to 10) and Pre-university: (Grades 11 and 12). Very low numbers of kids choose to do this though, particularly the last two years most either go out to work or go down vocational routes 

University: Very competitive! Kids have to sit entrance exams to even get a place!

Thailand 🇹🇭:

Prathom Suksa: age 6-11, compulsory and free (called P1 - P6)

Mathayoom Suksa: (called M1 - M6) lower secondary (up to age 15) compulsory and free, students then sit exams which indicate whether they should attend another 3 years, higher secondary.

(M6 is equivalent to U.K. A levels)

even in public schools it’s super competitive and best grades = best schools.

there are also some private schools, normally international schools you can pay for (some of those have entrance exams as well though). One family I knew payed thousandsss every year for a good international school!

University: I don’t know a ton about their uni’s they are mostly based near the cities, but I’m pretty sure they normally study there for 4 years (unlike the 3 years our kids do in Britain)

Costa Rica 🇨🇷:

I really liked what I saw of Costa Rican schools! I know the country invest a lot of them.. and I visited a few and they seemed like they had a nice vibe. The primary school where I lived was so interpreted in the community, it was nice.

Primary: age 6-12 (they call the years grades like in the states)

secondary: Compulsory up to 9th grade (15/16 yrs). After that it’s not compulsory but is still free. More specialised education after that point. Finishes at 11th or 12th year depending on the subjects (so kids will be 16-18 depending on when their birthday is)

At that point they could go to uni as an undergrad... I’m guessing when it comes to that though.. I’ve heard it referred to as a ‘University ’ and as ‘college’ so I don’t know what they regard it as out there 🤷🏼‍♂️

[Ellener]

18 hours ago, nospam99 said:

as a 'murcan, I don't 'get' the details when a UK resident posts about 'uni'.

my sister could never get that degrees are generally 4 years here as opposed to the 3 years in the UK! She was always asking 'hasn't he finished that degree yet?' about my son 😀

And now he has...Hallelujah!🎶

[basil67]

   Oh no....just typed out a really long answer and the 'return' function stopped working and lost it.                                                                                        

 

 

[basil67]

Yay, I started a new post and my copy/paste was saved!  Woot

Interesting topic @nospam99.  I was always confused that you guys go to college but we go to uni.  We also don't have words such as freshman or sophomore and I have no idea what the terms mean.  

Australia    We vary state by state, so I will give the NSW version. But AFAIK, the only real difference is in kindergarten naming/timing.

Broadly, public school is state funded.  Private and Catholic schools get federal funding over and above the fees parents pay.  We also have 'selective' schooling in the public school system for those who pass an entry test.  Like nospam says, parents may choose a private/Catholic school for perceived academic advantage.  But they may also choose private/Catholic for variety of reasons including wanting their kids to be in a more nurturing environment, avoiding public school kids and nepotism.  

School starts as Kindergarten for a 4 or 5yo depending on how 'school ready' they are or family circumstances.   After Kindy, years 1-6 are called primary school and years 7-12 are high school.   As part of the year 12 exams, students who want to attend university have their school scores rated for university entrance.  If the student meets the requirement for their chosen course at their chosen university, they get automatic entry.   The course ranking doesn't reflect how difficult the course is, but rather, the number of entrants competing.  For example: midwifery, law, medicine and architecture all have similar entry score requirements.  The length of a degree can vary, with three to four years being average.  A degree like medicine would require a post grad to practice, so we're talking perhaps eight years. 

For those not wanting university, there are also trade schools (including stereotypical female trades such as beauty, hairdressing or child care)  Trade schools are a combination of college and on the job training for four years.  Trade courses used to be heavily government funded but due to cost cutting, are increasingly having to rely on charging higher fees.  There are also private colleges for higher education, but there's been a heap of fraud by them and they have lost public trust.

Outside of Uni or trade schools, there's really not much available.  

 

[Emilie Jolie]

wow @Ollie180, you've certainly travelled a fair bit and obviously took a real interest in the countries you visited. Cool post, thank you

[nospam99]

I started this topic to give 'furiners' some jargon/vocabulary to help them understand posts by US parents. This post is going to fill that bucket to overflowing.

@basil. In the US, high school and 4-year college programs typically last for 4 years. Those individual program years and the students at those levels are typically called freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. Freshmen are called plebes at a small number of colleges, especially the military academies. The classes in the first two years of college are called lower division, in the last two, upper division.

Some high schools are sufficiently rigorous and/or the students sufficiently diligent so the students earn credit for college classes and don't have to take those classes in college. Such classes may not provide credit in college, but still allow bypassing the classes and satisfy prerequisites for more advanced classes. High school classes designed for college credit are called Advanced Placement (AP). AP achievement is confirmed by examination. Students who don't sit AP exams in high school may also earn college credit by sitting College Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests. AP and CLEP exams, as well as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) which is used by many colleges as an admissions criteria, are administered by the College Board, a private business with consequently tremendous power to influence outcomes in higher education. Programs of the College Board overlap with those of the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) used for admission to post-baccalaureate (after Bachelor's degree) programs such as Master's degrees.

[basil67]

@nospam99 your comment about rigorous HS classes providing the credits so that the students don't have to do the classes in college perhaps touches on something @preraph wrote the other day.  She wrote about the first two years of college being HS stuff.  Would she be referring to the same thing?   What kind of classes are you talking about?

Here on Oz, there's zero overlap between HS and Uni.  First class of Uni puts the student straight into the deep end of their degree.   

And 'plebes' is a word used here to describe anyone in bottom ranks of a work environment.

[preraph]

'Plebes,' haven't heard that word in a long time.  It used to be used here as a derogatory term kind of same as nerds or something like that.  

 

I had two years of language before college but had to start from the beginning in college.  I didn't even need language.  My high school advanced biology class was deeper than any I took in the first couple years in college.  I didn't dare take any more geometry or chemistry though!  Chicken!  Don't need them anyway for anything I've done.  Suppose if I'd gone into meth labbing....

[nospam99]

@basil. First two years being HS stuff was largely true where I went. And I was at an Ivy League (top tier) school (University) as a freshman. There were a couple of subjects, Economics and Psychology, that were not simply HS repeating. History, math, English, bio, chem, and physics were same as high school but with better lab equipment. It's gotten worse in the US in the intervening years. US high school is so bad now for the majority of kids who are not at the top and taking those AP classes, that the colleges have to provide non-credit remedial math and English for many incoming freshmen.

[Ollie180]

On 5/30/2020 at 10:49 AM, Emilie Jolie said:

wow @Ollie180, you've certainly travelled a fair bit and obviously took a real interest in the countries you visited. Cool post, thank you

😊 ...That’s the good thing about living places I guess - I have a head full of (normally fairly useless) trivia 😂