Special terms at English schools

When you read stories about English schools there is always talk about the form but it's not exactly explained.
In Germany you belong to a Klasse of 25 to 30 pupils or in my time 30 to 35. There were and probably are multiple Klassen per school. There is a room (Klassenzimmer) and a teacher (Klassenlehrer) assigned to the Klasse.
While the dictionary says form and Klasse are the same, especially if the story is about boarding schools it sounds as if a form consists of all the Klassen(forms that age) of a school and not just one.

Now I read an ebook about three 'brand new' Middle School teachers in the USA. It is not a spanking story. Even Enid Blyton's child novels now got a modernized English without spanking references or things being queer (strange) GBLTQ was unkown 1940. The teachers in the novel got their subjects (1st teacher Endlish, 2nd teacher History and 3rd teacher Math) and a room is assigned to them allowing them to act as spiders sitting in their nets (rooms) while the pupils (students) meet their doom when they get into their nets (rooms). Are English schools similar?
In Germany teachers actively have to hunt their prey (the Schüler, pupils, students). The task is made easier since the teachers know where to look (the (Klassenzimmer)) ;=)

I am sure there is no equivalent to head girl, head boy or prefect on German schools. We elected a form(?)speaker (Klassensprecher) representing every Schüler, pupil, student) of the form(?)Klasse
and a school speaker representing every Schüler, pupil, student) of the school. They had the easy task of representing the other prey if there was/were any problem(s). I wonder why I never competed for it.
Is the (Klassenlehrer) the same as a form teacher? In Germany the (Klassenlehrer) acts as first contact for problems he at best has an advisory role for the other teachers of his/her Klasse
In addition Germany makes a poor choice for any spanking past 1980 anyway. Since in 1980 Germany got EU conform and prohibited by law any physical or psychologic punishment of children and I don't think domestic violence is supported anymore either. Neither school nor husband can chastise the wife for a misbehaving offspring.

a small lecture i German:
der Lehrer means a male teacher
die Lehrer means multiple teacher
die Lehrerin means a female teacher
der Schüler means a male pupil student
die Schüler means multiple pupils students
die Schülerin means a female pupil student

I suspect you will find lots of variation even within the UK/Ireland, but in my case a 'form' referred to a 'year' and was comprised of several classes. The forms were called first form (aged about 11-12) through to sixth form, followed by an upper sixth (17-18). I have no idea why upper sixth was not called seventh form. In forms one to three all students did the same subjects (about 10 or 11 subjects), and were based in the same classroom which different teachers for different subjects visited, except for science subjects and art which had special equipment and where the class visited the teacher. Each subject generally had different teachers (although some teachers taught two subjects). At the end of third form we did a state exam (Junior Certificate) which you had to pass to continue, so some students were kicked out whilst the others did a more restricted set of subjects (about 7) and were streamed by ability in each subject. At the end of fifth form we sat another set of state exams (Senior Certificate / Ordinary or O Levels), after which more students were kicked out. In sixth form and upper sixth we studied 3 or 4 subjects for Advanced or A Levels. From fourth form onwards you could have different classmates for each subject, depending on subject choices and ability streaming. From fourth form onwards students generally traveled to the teacher, even for subjects not requiring special equipment.

Looking back, it must have been a logistical nightmare to organise, but somehow we all ended up in the right place at the right time (more or less).

I should perhaps add that the above refers to a Secondary school in Northern Ireland. To get into a Secondary (or Grammar) school you had to pass another state exam (the 11-plus). If you failed the 11-plus you were sent to an Intermediate school. Primary school generally lasted 7 years (P1 to P7), although I had to do it in six years because due to a change in the rules I would have been too old to do the 11-plus. I had to skip P6, which meant in the all-important P7 year I had no clue what was going on, but somehow I managed to survive.

I should also add, much no doubt to Moody's dismay, it is all changed now!

A form was just a school year. Back when these stories were set you joined secondary school at 11 in teh first form and moved on to the second form a year later. Compulsory schooling ended at 15 or 16 depending when its set in the fifth form. The sixth form lasted two years.
Now we're more sensible and call the first from year seven, through to year eleven but still talk about teh sixth form.
Typically there were many classes (Klasse) in a form.
Classes in state schools tended to be large 30-40 while private school (confusingly called public school) classes were smaller.

As I'm sure you know private schooling is more common in the UK. Traditionally we had a two way spilt at 11 to grammar(top 25-30%) and secondary modern. Grammar is like a gymnasium
Private schools avoided all of this.

My old school had three forms of around 42 pupils per form for each year. Pupils moved around the school to classes, depending on what subjects each individual pupil was taking.

In Australia when I was at Primary school we went from Prep - Grade 6. In High school they went from Year 7 - Year 12, although when I first began High school they were referred to as Forms, not Years, the terminology changed partway through.

@ BashfulBob
Thanks for the details.

Have you ever heard of Mallory Towers. It's the story I 'believed' the most since it's from a well known author. There a form was from all towers but same age. For my 7th or 8th birthday I got most likely 'Mystery of the vanishing cat.' It should be in a dusty box on the attic. I only remember the dark green shadowlike cover. Later I got some Famous Five books and borrowed the rest from the library. I liked George (ina) the tomboy a lot, but it's not her fault that most of my female friends were tomboys. My first I had in the kindergarden already. The German print had no references of spanking. What I remembered and was supporting was her spending all her money for Timmy the dog and living without sweets, not accepting any from others because she couldn't share any herself.
At the end of year 8 we had to select our focus. We selected advance chemistry. Then the deputy headmaster declared the school would finally get a second senior physics teacher and advanced chemistry would not be taught, we got first dibd on physics though. After the summer he told us no second physics teacher. Thus we reverted back to chemistry. At the end of the week a junior physics teacher was announce and the deputy headmaster would fill the senios teacher role for us. We were advanced physics again. Cool. Less than a week later the junior physice teacher was cancelled again. We would all do what we originally signed up for. Math: deputy headmaster Adv. Chemistry: deputy headmaster Physics: deputy headmaster The advanced chemistry course promised to be a lot of fun. At least it provided the mostmemorable chemistry lesson I ever had. One day he entered the practical chemistry lab with a test tube for every group and we had to descibe the contents. One pupil descibed the content as being of color old white. End of chemistry start of color lore. Or simply there is only black and white, all in between is grey. Thats the result of 90 minutes theory. I think Mr. Old White didn't think it funny. From then on the smokers for sure didn't like him. Whenever they needed to reduce the water in their body they got asked 'Lung already grey again, need to tar it?
He even showed us his teacher planning. Too bad he didn't allow us to select the teachers he assigned us. He did all the planning, the real headmaster only had to smile.


@ laura82
You are one of the rare people who knows what a German Gymnasium is?
I am pretty sure the mentioning of Gymnasium and 'No school uniforms in Germany' might lead to some wrong ideas. I remember when the girls had their special 'girls only' biology lesson in 5th grade (age 11). If you so much as looked at them they would nearly break into tears and cry 'Moody looked at me, now I am pregnant. Thats what good education looks like. I guess the female teacher still believed in the stork. Probably the reason why there are so few teachers.
That the 6th form lasts 2 years I already realized. In Germany a school year lasts two terms. ~August to Mid January and Mid January to ~July. First I rationalized 1st half is lower sixth and second half is upper sixth. Then I learned England like to torture pupils for three terms each year ;) Since high school only lasts until year 12 it couldn't be year 6+6=12 or year 6+6+1=13 But finally I accepted that Math doesn't lie. In year 11 I lerned that you can reach 120% in a Math test. In my last years tests lasted 2 hours or 90 minutes. In Germany a lesson last 1 hour or 45 minutes. Since in 1911 a Prussian minister applied modern psychology to school and a hour at school is fixed at 45 minutes since. In the test before I was done after 60minutes and I checked my test and corrected any mistake I detected resulting in a 3 (German schools use numbers instead of letters to grade pupils. For a 1 you need 93%, a 2 demands 82%. To pass you need a 4 or 50%. When we could look at the test I had to realize that until I corrected the 'mistakes' I had no mistakes. Thus when I was finished the next time after 45 minutes already, I turned it in. I think everyone assumed I had gone mad including the teacher. When after 75 minutes the next one turned his test in we were allowed to leave the room at last. When finally after 100minutes the teacher demanded the last test, I was informed that the teacher had already graded my test and had left a large red area beneath. That resulted in a bad conscience and a tough week for my nerves. The next week I had to realize that all the red was his calculation for the time I hadn't used. He needed a formula that made sure that writing your name on the test and turning it in wouldn't result in a pass.

Hello Moody,

As others have said form can mean class as in the group of pupils of the same age with whom you share a lesson. Depending on the school, nowadays, there are up to thirty people in that form.

Form when given a number like first form, second form etc means year group. Since 1990 in state schools in England this has changed to being called Year. Primary school starts at age 4 (the September after your fourth birthday so you may have someone who turned 4 on 31st August and someone turning 5 on 1st September) with a year group called reception, then year 1, 2, 3 and so on with the top year being year 6. Then you start secondary school/ senior school/High school at age 11 in year 7. Years 12 and 13 still get called sixth form.

Girls’ private schools usually stick to the same pattern of starting in the senior school at age 11. Boys’ private schools, many of which are now mixed, sometimes start the senior school at age 13. It varies a little from school to school but that first year group is usually called third form. So if you start age 13, you are in the third form, then fourth, then fifth, then lower sixth and upper sixth. A girls’ school is likely to call the year group with the eleven year olds the third form, then have lower and upper fourth, lower and upper fifth, and lower and upper sixth.

To complicate matters further, a few areas of England used to have middle schools, though I think these have all gone. At any rate they have gone from the area where I used to live. In those cases, you went to primary or first school, then middle school from age 8 or 9 until age 12 or 13 and then senior school.

What Enid Blyton describes in Mallory Towers, with her towers, is what is usually called houses. In a boarding school your house will be literally the house, or section of the building in which you live, and there will be an equal number of pupils from each year group in each house. In a mixed boarding school you would expect separate houses for boys and girls. Sometimes the sixth form, or the upper sixth have their own houses. Day schools also use the term house for a similar division but without there actually being a physical house. In that sense it exists for competition. There may be sports matches between houses, or house drama competitions, or house points given for good behaviour or attendance. There may be a house badge or each house may wear a different coloured tie.

The timing of the school year is based on the church and on the harvest. So a long Summer holiday to work in the fields, then the school year starts in September. There’s a Christmas holiday then the second term, an Easter holiday, then the third term. Each term has a (usually) one week holiday in the middle for half term. My step mother tells me that she went to a boarding school in England in the 60s where most of the pupils had parents living in the colonies, and they only had two terms with no break at Easter and no half terms because of the expense and time involved in the pupils travelling home to Asia and Africa.

BashfulBob’s description of the system is exactly as it was in my school. The only thing to add is that different canes were used for different forms. The shortest cane probably less than 24 inches was reserved for the prep school and used exclusively by the Head of Prep. The middle school cane was used on boys in the 1st form to the 4th form and was probably about 30 inches long and a considerable step up from the prep cane. The senior cane was used on boys in the 5th and 6th forms and was about 36 inches. The headmaster was fastidious about using the correct cane, other masters less so.

I think the use of the word "form" comes from its older meaning as a bench. If you imagine a small school with multiple ages taught in the same room, as you progressed through the school you would move back to a more senior bench or form.

Two other things about my school years have come back to me. Sixth form students were offered an optional (non-examinable) class in 'Scientific German' on the assumption at that time that German would be the main language for scientists in the future - I am not sure how that worked out! However the class was a disaster. The only things I remember were that Germans capitalised their nouns and were very fond of long compound words. I seem to remember the teacher spent most of the time boasting about how well he could speak French. I suspect he did not know any German at all.

The other thing I remember was when we were in sixth form the government introduced an exam which we did not prepare for called Use of English. This was designed to test how well you could express yourself in English. The main thing I remember about this was the headmaster announcing afterwards that students doing science subjects performed much better than those actually studying English for their A levels. I think the exam was discontinued after a year or two, so I am probably one of only a small number of people with a certificate saying I can speak my own language!