Education System în UK

INTRODUCTION EDUCATION SYSTEMS IN UK

I thought about this issue a license because many of my colleagues chose to study in the United Kingdom. So far he has aroused some curiosity. English educational system is even better? So I did a little research / comparison of UK educational system and Romania education system.

Educations have always been a controversial issue. There has been a major upheaval in recent years with the introductions of a new exam system and national curriculum in the late eighties, followed by the publications of school league tables in the early nineties. There is a general consensus that education standards are improving, although debate over standards in inner cities and areas of social deprivation still hit the headlines. And some argue that failing suburban schools attract less attention than they should.

Improved standards have put some independent schools under pressure- they are in competition with good state schools and may no longer be assured of long waiting lists. The introduction of selective state schools has encouraged some parents to try the state system. In higher education the increased number of university entrants testifies to the growing equality of opportunity.

Schools are compulsory for children between 5 and 16 years, but opportunities for learning extend far beyond these ages. The UK governments has pledged a nursery place for every four year-old whose parents’ would like one and most seventeen year-olds are in some kind of future education or work-related training. The workforce is getting used to the idea of retraining with the growing realisation that jobs are not for life. Adult education has become more popular, if only by necessity.

Every university has a group of mature students-although some fear that their number may be decreasing given the recently introduced university fees. With both schools and universities subject to league tables and rankings, the whole education system has become much more open.

Education is divided into state-funded and privately-funded (independent) sectors. Independent schools charge fees and are ‘independent’ of state control. There are independent schools of all kinds up and down the country, charging a range of fees and catering for all ages and religious beliefs. Confusingly, they have been known historically as public schools but are usually referred to as being private. The most famous (and most expressive) of these are schools such as Eton (attended by Princes William and Harry) and Harrow. Independent schools for children aged between seven and 11 are termed preparatory schools, traditionally preparing children for their public school.

The majority of schools are state-funded and free. Some are selective and some have such good reputations that competition for entrance is fierce, with parents even moving to a particular street in order to increase the chance of their child being accepted to a certain school. The majority of state schools are co-educational (mixed sex) and some have a religious bias, usually either Church of England or Roman Catholic, although state-funded Muslim schools have recently opened. Children in most state schools have to wear uniforms. The independent sector has more single sex schools and its fair share of religious schools. Almost all have uniforms, a few (such as Eton) dating back centuries and looking rather strange to the modern eye.

CHAPTER 1 EDUCATION SYSTEMS – INSTITUTIONS

This chapter includes learner stages in the course of education to travel along both obligator and the optional. Also I described, with some basic facts and figures, the range of institutions that make up the United Kingdom’s education system.

The United Kingdom has over 34,000 schools in total (30,000 in the maintained sector), with half a million pupils

PRESCHOOL:

Preschool provision by a Local Education Agency may take the form of:

Nursery school- Separate schools for 2-5-years-olds, each with its own head teacher and a number of classes staffed by teacher and nursery assistants who trained under the National Nursery Examination Board (NNEB). The recommended child/adult ratio is 13 to 1 (or 22 to 1 if qualified teachers only are counted).

Nursery classes within primary schools are Separate classes for 3-5-years-olds which are an integral part of a primary school, with staffing as for nursery schools.

Reception classes- Children who are just under compulsory school age can gain early admission to the first (reception) class in an infant or first school.

There is no obligation on LEAs to provide preschool education (except for children identified as having special educational needs) and provision varies greatly, both in amount and in type. In Wales, 69% of 3- and 4-year-old children go to maintained nursery or primary schools, full- or part-time, compared with 54% in Northern Ireland, 53% in England and 42% in Scotland. In Northern Ireland, 87%of the 3- and 4-years-olds in preschool education attended full-time, compared with 60% in Wales, 50% in England, and 25% in Scotland Considerable variation in amount and type of provisional is also found between regions, and between individual LEAs

Preschool children may also attend day nurseries, which are provided by local authority Social Departments, and regulated by the Department of Social Security. Private provision, including playgroups and childminders, has to be registered with local authority Social Services Department. In 1991-2, in the United Kingdom, some 30,000 children attended local authority day nurseries, 105,000 attended other registered day nurseries, 297,000 went to registered childminders and another 496,000 went to registered playgroups

There are also independent schools that cater for preschool children. There are two main types: those are basically preparatory schools-preparing very young children for entry to a highly academic independent school later on-and those that are a fee-paying alternative to maintained nursery schools, either because preschool places are in short supply or because the school adopts a particular educational philosophy, such as the Montessori Method. Since 1979, they too have been required to register with local authority Social Services Departments, and are not counted in the official education statistics.