Guest Podcast – British School System [Transcript]
Hi there, my name is Nicholas Jones, and today I’m going to attempt to give you an insight into the British School System, by talking a little bit about my time at school.
Just a short bit about myself first of all, I am 20 years old, and an undergraduate student at King’s College, University of London studying French and German; and this year I’m spending my Year Abroad in Saarland in Germany.
First of all I feel I must say I went to a slightly different school to some other schools, in that it was a school just for boys. But yet it was a state school, a state comprehensive school to be precise – comprehensive is similar to the “Gesamtschule” model in Germany, in that there are varying ability groups in one school; although this is much more widespread in the UK. And it varies between counties, some counties have “Grammar schools” still, whereas in Hertfordshire where I went to school we don’t have Grammar schools, there are just “State Schools” which are all comprehensive, and a few of those do have religious bias, although mine did not, and then there are the “Private schools” where you would need to pay money to go there, in the form of a subscription fee.
The better private schools, the well-known ones in fact, are called “Public schools” in the United Kingdom, quite a contradiction in terms, in that they are not similar to “les écoles publiques” in France for example and refers to the expensive private schools in the United Kingdom. But no, I don’t go to one of those schools, I went to a state school, which is paid for through taxes. Although my school had traditional values, it was compulsory to wear a school uniform, which consisted of a blazer, which was the school blazer with the school emblem which was actually “Faire mon Devoir” that was our school motto, on the blazer, and then there was the shirt – a white shirt or blue shirt or a dark grey shirt was also allowed and dark charcoal coloured trousers, perhaps you could say, I think there are various words to describe the word “grey” or “black” in the British English vocabulary and also black shoes and black socks. Now the interesting thing about uniform was the tie, each House within the school had a different tie. Houses are groups of pupils across all year groups, from Year 7 to Year 11, so not in the sixth form. Each House had its tie, the ties were the same except that each House had a different coloured stripe on the tie, there were six Houses in my school which were named after the roads around the school actually, and two were actually later added, in the latter part of the 20th Century. The school houses were “Brampton, Churchill, Hamilton, Jennings, Park and York”, I was in “Park” and each had a different colour, Park’s colour was yellow, for example. So that was our uniform! We also had different uniforms for sports as well, and these uniforms you had to wear everyday. In summer we could actually wear a slightly different uniform in that you could buy a summer shirt, which was a short-sleeved white shirt, with the school logo on it, and you could wear that without… in fact you had to wear it without a tie. So that was much more comfortable in the summer months, especially as much school was quite poorly ventilated and a group of 35 boys in a room can be quite warm in the summer.
So you start in Year 7 and some pupils leave after Year 11 after they’ve taken their GCSEs, these are the “General Certificates of Secondary Education” and when you’re in Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 a lot of the classes are mixed ability, but after Year 9 there are special classes called “sets”. And there’s usually the top set, the middle set, and the bottom set – and these are varying abilities. This is particularly true of subjects such as Maths or Modern Languages for example, where there were very different schemes of learning within the sets. So for example in the upper sets, top set, you will be taking the “Higher Level” whereas in the lower sets you will be taking “Foundation Level”. After Year 11, a lot of pupils stay, and a lot of pupils join the school from other schools in the area, for “sixth form”, which is not actually two years: which is “Lower Sixth” and “Upper Sixth”, Year 12 and Year 13 respectively. And at most schools in the sixth form you don’t have to wear a uniform, and it’s a lot more informal. But at my school it still remained quite a formal atmosphere, with all sixth form pupils wearing a suit, and for the girls, as there were girls in sixth form, they had to wear sort of “office wear” so perhaps a blouse and a smart skirt. There weren’t many girls, incidentally, as you might expect, so at this Boy’s School there were only 5-10 girls in each Sixth Form year.
So we had to wear these suits, and Prefects had a special badge on their suit. The same goes for anyone who was in a sports team, so if you’re the captain of a sports team you will have, for example a “Rugby Captain” badge, or if you happen to play tennis for the school, you may have a badge that says “Tennis” for your blazer, and I was a “Librarian” in the school library, and I had a badge that said “Librarian” throughout school, which of course, looking back was perhaps not the best thing to have worn!! But in Sixth Form I wore a “Senior Prefect” badge. The prefect system is where the older pupils in the school have special role and responsibilities, concerning themselves in the running of the school – they day-to-day operations, so for example Prefects may take “Registration” of younger pupils which is where in the morning and in the afternoon you read the register and check whether the pupils are in that class, or are in fact in school – and that is in fact an important legal document. Prefects may also assign duties to other prefects, for example litter picking of the school, or getting ready for a school play or parent’s evening, or an open evening, or another school event or fixture – perhaps sports related, as well as monitoring pupils going in and out of the school. Pupils are not meant to freely roam around the local neighbourhood. In fact you cannot leave the school until Year 11, unless you had to go to the Mosque for example. Some students were allowed to leave school to pray, and that did actually concern a lot of pupils at my school as there were a lot of Muslim pupils studying at my school. And Senior Prefects get to wear a blue gown, which you wear over your suit, was what we wore for special official events such as our service in the Abbey, which is the cathedral, or at our sports day but also regularly at our assemblies.
Every morning in school, there was an assembly, which would be taken by the Headmaster. And the Senior Prefects role was to make sure that this assembly actually took place and the two senior prefects in command of the assembly would have very specific roles, which I’m just going to describe to you now in the last few seconds of this podcast, which were to… one of them would follow the Headmaster into assembly – so he would wait for him at the door, which would then close, and then when the Headmaster came, the door would open, everyone in the Hall would stand up, so all the pupils would stand up silently, facing the front, the Headmaster would walk down the centre alley, with the senior prefect following from behind, and then the other senior prefect would be already waiting at the front, and would command all those in attendance to sit down, the phrase was “Sit down now please!” which you had to say very loudly and very clearly. And also the Senior Prefect may give a reading to the pupils, this could be from a religious text, such as the Bible or the Qu’ran or this may be something that has come up in the media, and this is usually prearranged in advance with one of the religious studies teachers or perhaps the Deputy Headmaster who was in charge of orchestrating this event.
So that was assemblies, and a little bit about my time at school, I will hopefully give you some more information at another stage in a separate podcast about perhaps some of the clubs and societies I was a member of at school and other aspects of the British School System. Thank you for listening!