Moody:
How large are schools in England? Back then a Gymnasium was grade 5 to 13 and had at least 3 classes per year with maybe 40 pupils each. Now its 1-2 classes per year of 25-30 pupils per class. Do your high schools really have a lower and an upper 6th form (12th and 13th grade)? The first time I read about lower and upper I didn't know you got 3 terms per year. In Germany we have 2 terms. Thus I assumed lower is first term and upper 2nd term. I read your school year always starts during the first week in September
Hi Moody, generally in England you start primary school at 4 and stay there for seven years. Nowadays ( since the early 90s) we call the year groups reception, year 1, year 2 and so on. A class usually has up to 30 children in it and an average primary school would have 2 classes in each year. Some are smaller, some larger. I went to a tiny little village school with 40 children in the whole school from age 4 to age 11. There were 4 children in my year group. So we were all taught together. Anyway, usually at eleven you go on to secondary school or high school and the year group is called year 7. Still 30 to a class but you’d expect perhaps 6 or 8 classes in each year or even more in some schools. Less than six would be considered quite small. Some schools finish at age 16, some then have the sixth form. This is years 12 and 13 but still gets called the sixth form from the time when the years at secondary school were first year, second year etc instead of starting at year 7. The lower sixth is one year long, the upper sixth the second year. Then at age 18 you leave. There are three terms in the school year. Autumn term from September to Christmas. Spring term from January to Easter. Summer term from after Easter to mid July. The names of the years are different in private schools and traditionally many boys private senior schools start at age 13 not 11. For girls it tends to be 11 still. Some areas have a little variation. My cousins in Oxford went to a middle school then started senior school at age 13.