5 ms·

The article makes frequent use of the term Sixth-former, which I hadn't heard before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si

by repiret 11y ago

The article makes frequent use of the term Sixth-former, which I hadn't heard before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_form It appears to be the equivalent of 11th and 12th grade in the US.

abritinthebay 11y ago
Yup, it's the part of UK school that happens post compulsory education (so after 16yrs old). Basically post-16 you can go out and work, or learn a trade, go to a trade-school, or continue with your more formal education at 6th Form level at either your school or a college (and we treat colleges as different to a university).
- gsnedders 11y ago
  > Yup, it's the part of UK school that happens post compulsory education (so after 16yrs old). *English & Welsh school. It's also used at the top of many UK private schools — both prep schools (at around 13, where historically it was the sixth "grade") and the public schools (which are, just to confuse everyone, not state schools). In Scotland education beyond sixteen continues on at secondary school, with no separate institution involved. (Though many in England and Wales have sixth-form colleges attached.)
- desas 11y ago
  The new leaving age laws came into force this summer, you can't go out and work pre-18 unless you're spending the equivalent of one day per week in training or education.
- chrisseaton 11y ago
  Also interesting for Americans is that in the six-form you will start to specialise down to three or four subjects, one of which you may study at university. People say UK degrees are short, and PhDs here are even shorter, but in part that's because at 16 I was already specialising in computer science, maths and physics.
  - davnicwil 11y ago
    On the other hand, this creates an adverse effect of specialising in what you're good at and what will be best for qualifying you for the type of degree you want to do, at the expense of a broader education. I too took Maths, Physics and Computing to A level because I knew I'd want to end up doing a Physics or Computer Science degree, and because I knew these subjects were my safest bets for As. For those outside the UK education system, all As at A-level is essentially the minimum requirement for getting into the best UK universities, so you're under a lot of pressure to ensure you get them if you want to go to one of these. I would have really liked to carry on studying other things - French, in particular. But because there would have been more of a risk of me 'dropping' to a B in French, as opposed to a maths/science subject, though I would have enjoyed it I would have been foolish to do so under that system. Instead I ended up taking French night classes years later, when I was out of University and the general educational funnel where you are strongly incentivised to focus solely on your specialisation of the moment for the best grade(s). It was much harder than it would have been at 16, and I'm much worse at French now than I could have been as a result, which is a real shame. Specialising early has benefits, for sure, but a very real drawback is that you have to sacrifice the development of other skills, knowledge and interests to do it properly. I'm not convinced 16 is a better age than 18 to start doing that, even if it means you're ultimately in education a year or two longer.
    - L_Rahman 11y ago
      I found the American university and its distribution requirements for engineering majors to be a nice counterbalance to my A Levels. My A Levels were in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Studied biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins, and because of my A Levels received credit for Calc 101/102, Bio 101/102, Phys 101/102, Chem 101/102. This left me with 32 credits of electives on top of my biomedical engineering distribution requirements. I used them to classes on art curation with the Walters museum in Baltimore, to explore concepts in philosophy and singularity in a writing class and examine the bioethics of genetic engineering.
    - mikekchar 11y ago
      Just to cheer you up a bit, I taught EFL (English as a Foreign Language) for 5 years and did quite a lot of study into language acquisition. I now firmly believe that it would not have been any easier for you to learn a language at 16 than at your current age. In fact, you have many other advantages at an older age that would argue that you will do much better now. I could write a book on the subject, but very quickly, the myth that children learn faster than adults is just a myth. In fact, the average child (who is doing almost nothing other than studying their native language in every waking moment) learns about 1000 new word families per year up until they reach 20 (at which point they will have acquired about 20,000 word families). "Word family" means a word and it's associated extensions -- police and policeman are one word family. It also includes conjugation/inflection of verbs, etc. The average 5 year old has about 5000 word families and probably about 2000 grammatical constructs. It takes them 5 years to learn that. Talk to a 5 year old so you can get a sense of what kind of proficiency that means ;-). A 10 year old has about 10,000 word families and about 3000 grammatical structures (basically all except very strange ones). They can't read a newspaper and understand it, but they can watch your average movie or TV show without any difficulty. To achieve adult level proficiency with an ability to read news papers, read technical documentation, write well in your job, etc. takes about 18-20 years. Many, many people in the general population fail to reach that level. Your failure has very little to do with your age. If you spent 10 years studying French full time, you could do much better than a 10 year old. Your failure has to do with the fact that languages are taught very, very, very poorly at schools (even private night schools). There are unreasonable expectations (like 2000 words of vocabulary -- words, not word families! -- will make you "fluent"). Also, the instruction tends to focus on teaching you grammatical rules from which you tortuously try to construct sentences. If you diligently apply yourself you will be able to construct many grammatically correct sentences... which are idiomatically wrong and hence unhelpful unless you have very accommodating conversation partners. My big helpful hints: - Don't compare your fluency/proficiency in French with that of your native language. It will take you at least 20 years to reach that level, unless you find some amazing shortcuts. - Learn languages by sentence, rather than by vocabulary or grammar. Take an exemplar that you don't know the meaning to and learn it. Don't bother with grammar rules unless you just happen to like grammar. - If you happen to like grammar, study it in French, not English. This will give you a wonderful supply of exemplar sentences to learn. - Study frequently for short periods of time. 15 minutes 3 times a day will give you much more ability than a 10 hour session once a week. - Study realistic sentences. Read books. Doesn't matter what. Just struggle through and memorize the meaning of any exemplars that you don't know. - Watch TV with subtitles. As much as you can. - Get a lot of French music (with lyrics). Learn them and sing them with the original. Record yourself and study the differences. - Don't ever give up. Ever. Even if you give up, start again. Start today. Start now. It's only 15 minutes. How is 15 minutes going to hurt you? - Find a reason to continue doing this. It doesn't matter what it is, but you need reasons to fuel you for at least the next 5-10 years. Your 16 year old self may have been able to comprehend the basic of basic french basics as they shoved it down your throat at school (possibly without actually letting you speak). Your older self actually has a chance to learn the language with fluency and proficiency as long as you take a realistic approach. Good luck!
slyall 11y ago
In New Zealand they used "forms" up until around 2007 but switched to "years" since then. Nice diagram in the link below which includes the type of schools each covers. Commonly children go primary school for 6 years, Intermediate for two and then High school for 5 (Form 3 through Form 7) You could leave school at 15 so it was quite common to do only 3 or 4 years unless you were going to university. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_Zealand#Years_of_schooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_Zealand#Years...

by repiret 11y ago

abritinthebay 11y ago

Yup, it's the part of UK school that happens post compulsory education (so after 16yrs old). Basically post-16 you can go out and work, or learn a trade, go to a trade-school, or continue with your more formal education at 6th Form level at either your school or a college (and we treat colleges as different to a university).

gsnedders 11y ago
> Yup, it's the part of UK school that happens post compulsory education (so after 16yrs old). *English & Welsh school. It's also used at the top of many UK private schools — both prep schools (at around 13, where historically it was the sixth "grade") and the public schools (which are, just to confuse everyone, not state schools). In Scotland education beyond sixteen continues on at secondary school, with no separate institution involved. (Though many in England and Wales have sixth-form colleges attached.)
desas 11y ago
The new leaving age laws came into force this summer, you can't go out and work pre-18 unless you're spending the equivalent of one day per week in training or education.
chrisseaton 11y ago
Also interesting for Americans is that in the six-form you will start to specialise down to three or four subjects, one of which you may study at university. People say UK degrees are short, and PhDs here are even shorter, but in part that's because at 16 I was already specialising in computer science, maths and physics.
- davnicwil 11y ago
  On the other hand, this creates an adverse effect of specialising in what you're good at and what will be best for qualifying you for the type of degree you want to do, at the expense of a broader education. I too took Maths, Physics and Computing to A level because I knew I'd want to end up doing a Physics or Computer Science degree, and because I knew these subjects were my safest bets for As. For those outside the UK education system, all As at A-level is essentially the minimum requirement for getting into the best UK universities, so you're under a lot of pressure to ensure you get them if you want to go to one of these. I would have really liked to carry on studying other things - French, in particular. But because there would have been more of a risk of me 'dropping' to a B in French, as opposed to a maths/science subject, though I would have enjoyed it I would have been foolish to do so under that system. Instead I ended up taking French night classes years later, when I was out of University and the general educational funnel where you are strongly incentivised to focus solely on your specialisation of the moment for the best grade(s). It was much harder than it would have been at 16, and I'm much worse at French now than I could have been as a result, which is a real shame. Specialising early has benefits, for sure, but a very real drawback is that you have to sacrifice the development of other skills, knowledge and interests to do it properly. I'm not convinced 16 is a better age than 18 to start doing that, even if it means you're ultimately in education a year or two longer.
  - L_Rahman 11y ago
    I found the American university and its distribution requirements for engineering majors to be a nice counterbalance to my A Levels. My A Levels were in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Studied biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins, and because of my A Levels received credit for Calc 101/102, Bio 101/102, Phys 101/102, Chem 101/102. This left me with 32 credits of electives on top of my biomedical engineering distribution requirements. I used them to classes on art curation with the Walters museum in Baltimore, to explore concepts in philosophy and singularity in a writing class and examine the bioethics of genetic engineering.
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    Just to cheer you up a bit, I taught EFL (English as a Foreign Language) for 5 years and did quite a lot of study into language acquisition. I now firmly believe that it would not have been any easier for you to learn a language at 16 than at your current age. In fact, you have many other advantages at an older age that would argue that you will do much better now. I could write a book on the subject, but very quickly, the myth that children learn faster than adults is just a myth. In fact, the average child (who is doing almost nothing other than studying their native language in every waking moment) learns about 1000 new word families per year up until they reach 20 (at which point they will have acquired about 20,000 word families). "Word family" means a word and it's associated extensions -- police and policeman are one word family. It also includes conjugation/inflection of verbs, etc. The average 5 year old has about 5000 word families and probably about 2000 grammatical constructs. It takes them 5 years to learn that. Talk to a 5 year old so you can get a sense of what kind of proficiency that means ;-). A 10 year old has about 10,000 word families and about 3000 grammatical structures (basically all except very strange ones). They can't read a newspaper and understand it, but they can watch your average movie or TV show without any difficulty. To achieve adult level proficiency with an ability to read news papers, read technical documentation, write well in your job, etc. takes about 18-20 years. Many, many people in the general population fail to reach that level. Your failure has very little to do with your age. If you spent 10 years studying French full time, you could do much better than a 10 year old. Your failure has to do with the fact that languages are taught very, very, very poorly at schools (even private night schools). There are unreasonable expectations (like 2000 words of vocabulary -- words, not word families! -- will make you "fluent"). Also, the instruction tends to focus on teaching you grammatical rules from which you tortuously try to construct sentences. If you diligently apply yourself you will be able to construct many grammatically correct sentences... which are idiomatically wrong and hence unhelpful unless you have very accommodating conversation partners. My big helpful hints: - Don't compare your fluency/proficiency in French with that of your native language. It will take you at least 20 years to reach that level, unless you find some amazing shortcuts. - Learn languages by sentence, rather than by vocabulary or grammar. Take an exemplar that you don't know the meaning to and learn it. Don't bother with grammar rules unless you just happen to like grammar. - If you happen to like grammar, study it in French, not English. This will give you a wonderful supply of exemplar sentences to learn. - Study frequently for short periods of time. 15 minutes 3 times a day will give you much more ability than a 10 hour session once a week. - Study realistic sentences. Read books. Doesn't matter what. Just struggle through and memorize the meaning of any exemplars that you don't know. - Watch TV with subtitles. As much as you can. - Get a lot of French music (with lyrics). Learn them and sing them with the original. Record yourself and study the differences. - Don't ever give up. Ever. Even if you give up, start again. Start today. Start now. It's only 15 minutes. How is 15 minutes going to hurt you? - Find a reason to continue doing this. It doesn't matter what it is, but you need reasons to fuel you for at least the next 5-10 years. Your 16 year old self may have been able to comprehend the basic of basic french basics as they shoved it down your throat at school (possibly without actually letting you speak). Your older self actually has a chance to learn the language with fluency and proficiency as long as you take a realistic approach. Good luck!

slyall 11y ago

In New Zealand they used "forms" up until around 2007 but switched to "years" since then. Nice diagram in the link below which includes the type of schools each covers. Commonly children go primary school for 6 years, Intermediate for two and then High school for 5 (Form 3 through Form 7) You could leave school at 15 so it was quite common to do only 3 or 4 years unless you were going to university. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_Zealand#Years_of_schooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_Zealand#Years...