Special terms at English schools

@ KatiePie
You are a sexiest ;)
Are you saying, boys are only allowed to senor school two years after girls. We might be dreaming of Victorian times when men still held their rightful place in human society but we aren't dumb. Even we know: one plus one equals two. I concede that might be, because we defined it while we still could do it.
I think it was in year eight when we had to write a synopsis in a German test. Result D- or worse explanation too long for a synopsis she declared it is a good renarration but no synopsis. When we compared our results I had to realize her pet pupil got an A for a much longer piece. That was the final nail to taking female teachers serious and slightly increased my dislike for German if that was still possible. To 'prove' it the following term we got a male teacher and I went from D to B, no A though since that would cause an investigation (I was between A and B my participation wouldn't be enough for an A anyway). The worst I got afterwards was a C for a test or on my report card and we mostly discussed poems and literature afterwards. If the author tells you of an azure sky his main character is in love and such nonsense. In addition in poems words have a reason the author doesn't use them to form a rhyme. That was when I thought of becoming an author, but I was smart enough to realize I was in a loose loose situation, a female teacher would say I wrote it because of reason X, then I would say I am the author I should know why I wrote it and be told You might believe it, but in reality your subconscion forced you to write that way because of aforementioned reason X. I don't think the reasoning of male teachers was better, but I had learned to hold my tongue with them or my logic was closer to theirs.

terms
In Germany we have two terms called 1st and 2nd half year. You see, males are smart we can calculate two halves are a full. The exact dates are a state matter. The federal government has no say on that matter. We only have state schools which are funded by the cities. The state orders the music but lets the cities pay for it. There are only a few 'well hidden' private schools I guess. [German]Hochschulen<>[AE or EE]High schools are state funded I think at least it would be logical, but we are talking about politician, they bury logic when it comes to elections. Once upon a time I embarressed myself when I wrote to an American: college comes before high school. I can only excuse myself for the literal translation of Hochschule = high school since in reality in Germany they are universities. Mid January you switch from 1st term to 2nd term without any holiday unless you want to call a weekend as holiday. School ends somewhere between June and August and restarts six weeks later. We got a two week holiday for Easter and Christmas each plus another two week holiday in fall. Try 'Schulferien Deutschland' on google if you want to know when the suffering for German pupils is put on hold.

forms again
I know houses from Harry Potter and that it reflects the good old times. In Germany the books are numbered by year 1, year 2, and so on. Are they numbered by year or form in England. Scrap that, I got the original books I only need to search them, the years are on the films. I own the German DVD version. I also know that there are two versions of book one. Was it Sorcerer's(AE) and Philosopherer's(EE) stone ?
I would describe Mallory Towers as girls' books (I already see Flopsybunny firing up the stake for my use of the '), why would a boy want to read about girls at a girls' boarding school unless boys and girls would share a tower. I know it would be coeducational not...
The bad(all when it comes to female logic) boys would end up in the dungeons anyway ;)
I guess Flopsybunny is making sure the stake is hot enough now, starting every sentence with I. That didn't even happen when I was an ABC sniper (That's what first years are called in Germany because they learn the ABC. Since we were learning the alphabet we were excused from writing essays or are they called compositions ?)

The Famous Five are OK for boys too. They have to be, since I read them. I even prefer the German translation of 'Famous Five' into 'Five Friends' better than the original.

In one story I remember that it used multiple forms like 5a, 5b and so on.
That is done in Germany too, but the letters only tell when you got enrolled. a means 1st batch and e means 5th batch.In the story a were the best pupils while lets say f were the pupils with an abysmal skill set. I wonder what happens with an A in all subjects pupil if there is no free place in batch a and is put into batch z? OK batch Z would be the pupils that don't breath, you can't remember everything ;)

When I was at an all-boys' school in the 1960s/70s we had an intake of about 90 boys each year and after the first year they were streamed. The top stream did French and German, the middle stream French only and the third stream, disgracefully, did no foreign language at all and did things like technical drawing as they were considered likely to have to go into a trade rather than academia and languages were considered hard. And this was after being selected for a grammar school at the 11-plus stage.

The form of thirty stayed together in a cohort for all lessons so there was no flexibility there although I remember for the two years prior to exams there was some subject choice in non-core subjects. In the sixth form - and not all boys stayed on - you were split between arts and sciences although some subjects like maths and geography were a bit of a crossover. Nobody seemed to think of going to specialist sixth form colleges.

The science teaching was, in retrospect, better than the arts teaching but my wife went to an all-girls' school where the opposite was true. People look back fondly on their education in those days but personally I think it was shit and for those who didn't pass the 11-plus sometimes they left school with no qualifications whatsoever and nobody seemed to care, there were plentiful jobs in industry which didn't require any skills..

@ PGreenham
That is information I hadn't in mind ;) but it's a nice to know. People always talk about junior cane and senior cane and since you never saw them you don't know what they are.

@ AlanBarr
Such stories are nice when you try to remember things, they stay longer in your RAM.

@ BashfulBob
Luckily we don't have to prove that we can speak German.
But in your finals you had to do ONE oral exam. I got technical drawing. Officially you got 5-10 minutes to prepare the answers. On the days the first one got the time according to a stop watch. When he faced the examination board the next was called forward to prepare. I think it was more to calm your nerves. When I was called one board member gave me a set of question and told me that are the first questions asked. I hardly sat and read the first question 'What is the DIN format?' when the board member asked me: Ready? I don't think my answer mattered and it wasmy turn. (I am sure, I still can answer that question when it is my turn to go) The one before me probably only said Hello. Luckily the next questions were equally easy. The last part was to explain a connection diagram. There it would have been nice to prepare or at least get a look at it beforehand. Since it wasn't utterly complex it wasn't a hurdle. In the end it was easier than the written tests and you knew the answers already if you had prepared for the written test.

@ mobile_carrot
You lucky one, an all boys school. I begged my parents to enroll me at the same school my girl friend went to. Two years or three years prior it was still an all girls school. The female teachers clearly didn't know what to do with boys. I developed some kind of hatred for female teachers there.

Since I did a science degree at a Fachoberschule (college) I coudn't evade 'technical drawing' and to make us even happier we did it in mechanical and ET ((Elektrotechnik) Electrical engineering). If you make annotation you need to be able to be deciphered from the bottom or right. Even the width of the pen was defined.
Ever written anything using a lettering stencil?
I can recommend it, it is so much fun. You learned so much you would never forget again because it was that helpful. and all this cheap items you needed like indian ink pencils in 0.25 0.35 0.5 and 0.7 mm diameter ;) I think the 0.25 I used once to test it, but it's a set that is cheaper than 3 singles and you needed them as lead pencils too (it's called lead even though it's graphite) but you could skip the 0.25

I tried French too as an elective. That my mother had an uncle who was a French teacher and provided private lessons for me was not exactly a motivation ;) It became the subject I studied the shortest

English schools were and are full of complexity in their arrangements. Mine, a girls' grammar school (i.e. a selective school, requiring an examination pass at 11) in the 1960s, used the term 'class' and 'form' indiscriminately for a group of about 24 girls who studied together in the first three years from age 11. You could be in Mrs W's form, ie a class, which was one of four taking girls of the same year of entry. Mrs W was the classroom mistress who took the register twice a day, and was supposed (presumably) to provide some sort of pastoral oversight.These forms were variously known a III Alpha, III A, III Parallel and Form III. Each 'form' had its own classroom/formroom, and most mistresses came to you. You had a desk of your own in which to keep books, pens, pencils etc and illicit stuff like sweets, and posters of pop stars. For Art, Housecraft(!) and needlework, and various sciences, we went off to specialised rooms. The first year, for reasons lost in antiquity, was known as the 'Thirds'; there had in the past been a junior school. To fit in the year groups up to 16, there were Fourths and Upper Fourths, and Fifths and Upper Fifths. Then the Sixth and Upper Sixth. In the Fifth form, we were sorted into more specialised groups 'V Science', 'V Languages', 'V Latin', and 'Form V' who studies slightly different sets of 'O Level' exams. I only realised forty years later that there was in fact a pecking order and Form V girls did fewer O Levels and mostly left at 16. No idea if this was cause or effect of the classification. More than half the girls stayed on to do 'A Levels' at 18. Sixth Form classes were known by the initials of their form mistresses - Upper VI R-J, for instance. In retrospect it seems horribly complicated. We didn't have 'houses' at all.

We could also do a 'Use of English' paper in the Sixth Form but I chose instead to do an additional 'A Level' in General Studies, which had no lessons to support it, and seemed generally to be disregarded by universities for the purposes of admissions. It involved essays and problem solving, science and humanities, literature criticism and Mechanics, and a language translation from French, German or Latin.

And I did a one year Sixth Form elective course on 'German for Scientists', which had no science in it at all, but focussed on finding railway stations, as far as I recall.

@ Farstrider
too get an even footing that is the time table fpr German pupils:
Grundschule (primary school)
age year
6 | 1
7 | 2
9 | 3
10 | 4
secondary schools
11 | 5
12 | 6
13 | 7
14 | 8
15 | 9 finishing year for Hauptschule until mid or end 1970ies
16 | 10 finishing year for Hauptschule until today and finishing year for Realschule
17 | 11 start year for Fachoberschule
18 | 12 finishing year for Fachoberschule and now finishing year for 12year Gymnasium
19 | 13 finishing year for traditional 13year Gymnasium

More and more states drop the Hauptschule.

At primary school which is the same for everyone, you are assigned to a class and the pupils that are in it will learn and curse with you for 4 years. At the end of year 3 the school will kind of rate you and suggest the school type your parents should enroll you next. If they say Hauptschule, where mostly emmigrants are, and your parents enroll you at a Gymnasium, so be it.
Hauptschule is the same as primary school I guess, only you learn to count to more than 10.
Fachoberschule is the in between from Realschule to university but you can't study everything you make a specialized Abitur.
Gymnasium ends with the unlimized Abitur. If I wanted to irritate you I would say Abitur means you are allowed to enroll at high school because German universities are called Hochschule.
At year 5 you are assigned a new class until the end (of your school life) Starting in year 9 you need to select advanced courses which consist of pupils from different classes. In my class my first name exited twice in my class but In my chemistry coursr I was one of 5. To makes matters worse the course had only 21 members including one girl. She was a real tomboy and could make some of the boys run really fast for the horizont.
I knew her since primary school and she made a good friend. She wore jeans, sneaker and a knuckle-duster. (joke).
I shared a table with a namesake. at the bext table behind me another, to my righ scros the side table yet another. We were innocent, after we selected our places the teacher thought it a good idea to rearrange us. When he called my name and looked in our direction the one who knew the answer answered him. I thought you looked at me! He wouldn't rearrange us, he learned his lesson ;)

Just to confuse matters even further at my old established grammar school at 11 one started in the third form with three streams PQR and next year the 4th year was the same.
Next year you specialised and we had lower fifth (V2) science A & B , V2 lit A&b and R.
R was for the boys expected to leave with 0 levels ad not go onto the sixth form .
At 14 you entered midV MV, and next the upper fifth V1.
In the sixth form it was assumed you'd go on to university or train to be an officer in the services.
lower sixth was V1 2 and upper V1 1
The second 1 or 2 was always written as a small 2.
The sixth form was divided into modern languages, classics (Latin and Greek), the science on whether you took biology or physics, or economics.
PS Like Bashful Bob I also have Use of English as a quasi A level, and also passed my able seaman's exam in the Navy CCF-combined cadet force, I declined to join it in the sixth form , it was the swingimg sixties. I now regret it as the services laid on some excellent free summer camps.

I went to what was called a comprehensive school, as the 11 plus exam had been abolished. Bizarrely there was an independent school in the city which had an entrance exam and the state would pay the fees if you passed. I refused to take the exam because it would mean travelling to school and splitting from my friends (my Mum didn't forgive me for that, the more so when I sent my own son to that school in due course by which time the state didn't pay the fees)
As a strange twist, the only school friend I am still in contact with did go to the independent school so that shows how much I knew.

Scientific German. Yes, when I left school and started studying Engineering at technical college I was in the first year group which did not have to study German for the reasons mentioned earlier. It was just as well.

Just to add to previous detail, between the 1st form and 5th form there were three classes of about 25 boys in each. For instance in the 4th form there was 4G (General), 4S (Science) and 4L (Language). The brightest were always in S and L with the rest of us left in G. It was interesting that the G classes had two distinctions - those boys were always the best at sport and those boys were much more likely to get into trouble and much more familiar with the cane!

@ PGreenham

It seems you descibe the alphabetical system of adding a letter as desriptor for the academic skill of the pupils but try to communicate that it was something the school decided. Like 3a (A-Level pupils) and 3c (Cane educated pupils)

I admit that most of my problems are related on my try to apply my practical eperiences in/at German schools to English schools which obviously doesn't work well. I think even in the early 1970ies the cane wasn't used anymore. This won't make me shed tears. Especially since in year 3 I might have gotten a close look at it. Probably too close to have fond memories. We got religious lessons and the Kaplan (priest in learning) had no authority. The girls in the first few rows listened intently to him We boys having retreated to the last rows at first only relaed. Later we did 'PE' He would chide us and we would slow down a bit and continue.

Am I right if I say a form are all pupils of a year. small schools that can't form two reasonably sized forms will have one each year and larger schools might have multiple where a form is like a class in Germany.