15_School_and_education

And now, I’d like to describe the school system in the United Kingdom.

School attendance is obligatory from the age of 5 till the age of 16 there. Their system can also be divided into four stages, pre-school, primary, secondary and tertiary education. The pre-school education includes kindergartens for children under the age of 5 and primary education is for children between 5 and 11 years. Schools follow the national curriculum which defines what all pupils have to learn.

These two stages are basically the same in our country.

Some of the differences show in secondary education. Most secondary schools are comprehensive schools, which offer a general education to children of all abilities. In some areas children are selected for either grammar school, which is more academic, or secondary modern school.

Education in Britain is free, and most children go to state schools. However, some parents pay to send their children to independent schools, which are often called public schools, although they aren’t really public at all. Many of these are boarding schools, where children live and sleep during the term.

Secondary education is for students between 11 and 16 years and it’s finished by the GCSE examination which they have to pass. After that, two thirds of pupils leave school and get a job, the others can go to college of further education, which prepares them for specialized practical jobs, or continue studying for advanced levels. There, they usually have 2-3 subjects in which they take A levels at the age of 18 and go to university.

University is tertiary education. In the Great Britain, there are several universities that are very famous and prestigious, for example Oxford and Cambridge.

If I have to compare this school system to ours, I would say that the Czech pupils start the school later than in Great Britain, and the British compulsory education lasts longer than in our country. The big diference is also that most British students have to wear uniforms at secondary schools. The school uniforms have pros and cons aswell. The advantage is that there aren‘t the diferences in clothing between social groups and also you don’t have to decide what to wear in the morning. The disadvantage is that you can’t express your individuality in clothing and the school corridors must look boring when you see crowds of students, all dressed the same.

I attended kindergarten in Kročehlavy, after that I went to 8th primary school, in Vodárenská, here in Kladno. Then I passed the enter exams to the Gymnasium and now I’ve been studying here for four years.

After secondary school, I would like to study Police Academy in Prague, so I hope I will pass the enter exams in June.

In education, there are a lot of problems in a few last years. I think the most serious one is the lack of money invested in education. Therefore the teachers are underpaid and young people don’t have enough motivation to become one. More money would be also good for the school equipment which is quite old-fashioned in lots of schools.