How the hell does your school system work?

[Bram]

What it all boils down to is that I don't understand how the US school systems works. TV and the intarweb flood me with titles, names and concepts I recognize but can't immediately compare to our Dutch school system. So what I'm gonna do is give a brief outline of the Dutch school system, with average age groups and titles. What I'd like one of you guys to do is give a roughly the same table for the US system with corresponding titles etc.

Kleuterschool ('infant school') - mandatory - starts at age: 4
groep 1 (year 1 etc.)
groep 2

Basisschool ('basic school') - mandatory - starts at age: 6
groep 3
groep 4
groep 5
groep 6
groep 7
groep 8

Middelbare school ('middle school') - mandatory - starts at age: 12
There are various types of middle school you can attend, based on an evaluation of your capabilities and your grades by your middle school teachers.
- VBMO: 4 years. Prepares you for MBO (practical education to become, say, an electrician)
- HAVO: 5 years
- VWO: 6 years
- Gymnasium: 6 years (VWO plus Latin/Greek)

Voortgezet Onderwijs - ('continued education') - optional - starting age depends on middle school education.
There are various types of continued education you can follow, depending on your middle school education.
- MBO (middle professinal education: practical courses. Typically starts at age 15 or 16) for VMBO
- HBO (higher professional eduction. Typically starts at age 17 or 18) for HAVO
- WO (scientific education. a.k.a. universiteit. The type of university you can attend depends on the courses you chose in middle school. Typically starts at age 18 or 19) for VWO/Gymnasium

The duration of university (WO) education depends on the type of study. It's either 4 years for alpha-subjects (law, arts, psychology) and 5 years for scientific and technical subjects.

In case of the latter: you get a B.Sc. certificate after 3 years and a M.Sc. certificate after an additional 2 years completed by an 'afstudeerproject' (researchproject). In addition, you get the less-internationally renowed title of 'ingenieur' (ir.).

After this, you can do a 'promotion research' (promoveren) at the univeristy so that after a couple of years, you can add 'dr.' (doctor)  to your title. A typical title would be: Dr.ir. G.W. Bush, M.sc..

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Now there's a LOT of US terminology that I cannot put into this context, including, but not limited to:
- college
- high school
- university
- graduation
- post-graduate
- undergraduate
- Ph.d.
- master/bachelor of arts
- etc.

If anyone could help me out, I'd be REAL greatful.

[Toad]

Hehe nice idea. In France, things goes like this :

Maternelle - mandatory - starts at age:3

Maternelle 1
Maternelle 2
Maternelle 3
Maternelle 4
Maternelle 5

(I know, stupid names).

Ecole Primaire -  mandatory - starts at age:8

CP - For Preparatory Class.
CE1- For Elementary Class, Year 1.
CE2
CM1 - For Medium Class, Year 1.
CM2

Collège -  6ème and 5ème are mandatories - starts at age:13

Sixième (=6th Class) - You choose a first foreign language between English and German.
Cinquième (=5th)
Quatrième (=4th) - Second language between English, German, Spanish and Italian. Possibly Latin and Greek too on request.
Troisième (=3rd)

Students can leave school at the end of 5ème and start to pass a professional qualifications. At the end of the 3ème, there is a final exam called "Brevet des Collèges", which shows you have completed the primary cycle.

Lycée - not mandatory - starts at age:16

Seconde (=2nd)
Première (=1st) - 3 different options here, Scientific, Economics and Litterature.
Terminale (=terminal) - You keep the option selected in Première.

At the end of the Terminal you have a big final exam called "Baccalauréat" (or Bac), which shows you completed the second cycle. Then you can take multiple branches depending on what you want to do (if you succeed at the Baccalauréat). The Bac is considered as the standard study level.

Etudes supérieures - optional, baccalauréat required

* Faculté: this is a 2 years course that gives a DEUG diploma (called a Bac+2-years diploma) . Its similar to americans high schools. After that, you can work on a Licence and a Mastère (resp. Bac+3 and Bac+4 diplomas). You also have the DEA and the DESS (don't ask for the meanings), but more research oriented (Bac+3 grades). This covers every single research domain.

* BTS / DUT: these are professional education courses, which half time for classes and half time for effective work. They give a Bac+2 diploma too, but rated under the DEUG.

* Classes préparatoires: this is a 2 years courses that prepares (préparer = to prepare) to the higher schools known as "Grandes Ecoles". You can take 3 different options, scientifics, economics and litterature. At the end of the 2 years, you have competitive examinations.

* Grandes Ecoles: you enter here if you perform well at the competitive examinations at the end of the Classes Préparatoires. Its a 3 years course that delivers an engineer diploma which is highly rated (a Bac+5 diploma).

As far as I'm concerned, I took English in Sixième and Latin and Spanish in Cinquième. I succeded at the Brevet des Collèges and took the Scientific option in Première, before succeeding again at the Baccalauréat. Then I went to a Classe Préparatoire and entered a Grande Ecole after the 2 years.  I had my 3 years formation in a school called ENAC, which is specialized in Aeronautics. Meanwhile, I passed a Human-Machine Interface DESS because that was cool stuff with lots of chicks.

[Bram]

Bravo! Exaclty what I wanted! If someone could do this for US and English school systems as well, this will be the most educational thread I've ever read on these boards

[Zherbus]

Pre-school (Glorified Daycare) Up to ages 4-5. - Optional
 
Elementary
Kindergarten, typically age 5. - Manditory
Transition - Age 6 if student is not ready for grade 1. - Optional
Grade 1
Grade 2
Grade 3
Grade 4
Grade 5
Grade 6 - Sometimes included in Junior High School

Junior High School
Grade 7
Grade 8

High School
Grade 9 - Sometimes included in Junior High School
Grade 10
Grade 11
Grade 12 - Sometimes skipped if student already fulfilled credit requirements.

College - Undergraduate
Certifications
Vocational
Associates
Bachelors

College - Graduate
Masters
PHD
Doctorate

I think that's it, but I'm tired and I'm sure someone will pipe in to correct me.

[rvs]

Bram left something out. Universities are mostly transitioning to Bachelor+Master systems, for various reasons, one of which to be better comparable to foreign universities.

[Dr. Sylvan]

The age when mandatory school begins and ends varies by state. In Illinois I believe it's 6-16. I'm sure some places kindergarten is mandatory.

There are exceptions to some of the rest of it (and my own experience probably combines more of the exceptions than most).

I don't know what the proportions are in Europe, but in the US 65% of all high school graduates go on to college at this point. That may give you some idea how comparatively widespread our notion of "you should go to college" is.

I may think of more notes to Z's explanation later; as I just woke up.

[jpmeyer]

We have a bit of variation in the years that you stay at each school, which varies based on your individual school district.  Your school district is the set of schools for the area that you live in.   Here's the way it worked at my school district, for instance:

Early Childhood
Kindergarten (start at 5-6)
First Grade
Second Grade

Elementary School
Third Grade
Fourth Grade

Middle School
Fifth Grade
Sixth Grade
Seventh Grade
Eigth Grade

High School
Ninth Grade
Tenth Grade
Eleventh Grade
Twelth Grade

Also, unlike in Europe and Japan, in America we don't have different tiers of public schools based on difficulty/prestige/educational program.  In my town, for instance there were about 7 school districts (we have about 200,000 people in my town.)  Unless you wanted to go to a private school, you went to the school that was located where you lived.  If any of the schools were "better" than the others, it didn't really change very much since you would still learning more or less the same stuff at any of them.

Oh, and the difference between college and university is that universities include graduate or professional schools.

[Saucemaster]

Now there's a LOT of US terminology that I cannot put into this context, including, but not limited to:
- college
- high school
- university
- graduation
- post-graduate
- undergraduate
- Ph.d.
- master/bachelor of arts
- etc.

Some of this has already been covered above, including the college/university distinction.  Typically, however, when you graduate from a college or university (usually after four years), you receive your Bachelor's degree.  If your degree is in anything humanities-related and even some sciences, it's a BA (Bachelor of the Arts).  This is what most people graduate with, and is considered a more or less "standard" level of education.  

A Master's degree is the next step after a Bachelor's, requiring Graduate School (because you've already graduated from college with your Bachelor's).  Depending on the field, a Master's can take anywhere from a couple years to much longer.  Many people eschew the Master's entirely, however, or pick it up along the way to a

Ph.D., which is what "postgraduate" typically refers to, though some people use "postgraduate" to refer to Master's programs as well.  Typically it takes about 5 years+ to reach your Ph.D.

Most of this you already know, probably, but it helps to be clear.

So to take an example a la Toad, I went to a private school for Kindergarten and 1st through 6th grade (elementary school).  At that point I transferred to public school for Junior High/Middle School (grades 7 and 8 in my school system), went on to a public High School (grades 9-12), then went to a university (U.C. Berkeley), where I took five years (had to pay my damn way through, plus I'm... lazy) to graduate with a BA in Philosophy.  Obviously, a useless degree, but I enjoyed it.  I've stopped there and have no plans to continue formal education at this time, however my fiancee did all that and was just accepted to a Ph.D. program in Clinical Psychology, which she'll begin this fall.  So she will go on to another five years of schooling in Philadelphia (I'm moving with her, so maybe I'll be able to make some of those East Coast tourneys?) at Temple University, after which she'll have her doctorate-level degree in Clinical Psychology and will probably try to teach and do research.

[Bram]

Thanks guys! It's beginning to make a lot more sense to me now.

Just one question. I'm in my final year of university now, having finished all my courses and have recieved my B.Sc. 2 years ago. Now I just need to do a 6 month research project, wrote a report on it, and I'll recieve my Master's degree. So if I understand correctly, I would be classified as wanting to do 'graduate research'  (or some people would say 'post graduate research' even though most of the times that refers to a Ph.D. thesis, which is what we call 'promoveren' and is not the case for me), right?

[Milton]

Also, unlike in Europe and Japan, in America we don't have different tiers of public schools based on difficulty/prestige/educational program. In my town, for instance there were about 7 school districts (we have about 200,000 people in my town.) Unless you wanted to go to a private school, you went to the school that was located where you lived. If any of the schools were "better" than the others, it didn't really change very much since you would still learning more or less the same stuff at any of them.

This is a very important aspect of the American public education system.  I teach at a mid-sized (1300 students) high school in Wisconsin.  We offer everything from AP Physics to Small Engine Repair classes.  Students are not tracked through high school.  They choose what classes they want to take, assuming they can meet a pre-requisite (a passing grade in Algebra is required to get into Advanced Algebra, for example).

We have required classes that every student has to pass to graduate.  Freshman level Civics, for example, is a required class.  Sometimes a student with a perfect score on his SAT sits behind a kid who is EBD (emotionally - behaviorally distrubed).  This is an important aspect of the American democracy.  Public schools are democratic institutions, where kids of different racial, ethnic, religous and socio-economic backgrounds share ideas and learn to get along.  Then they go off to their elective classes, such as Financial Planning or AP United States History or Weightlifting.  Private schools, on the other hand, generally do not have this democratic multi-cultrual, multi-ethnic and multi-class atmosphere.

Our foreign exchange students are usually shocked by two or three things at our school.  First, they are amazed at the level of physical education and team sports.  Almost every student does something, from Track to Football to Soccer.  There are other non-athletic clubs and activities also.  Some students are in the spring Musical or in Academic Decathalon or the Band or the FFA.  Team sports are huge, though, and even a poor athelete can find success on the athletic field.  This is usually not the case in other countries.  We have a fieldhouse, a big weightroom, locker rooms, two gyms, a big swimming pool and seven or eight athletic fields outdoors (baseball, softball, soccer, football), as well as walking and cross country trails behind the school.  We also have access to a nine lane ruberized track and an astro-turf football stadium from the local college, which graciously allows us to share facilities.  The local college also has a huge pool/fieldhouse facility which includes a six lane, 200m indoor track, two large gyms, bowling alleys, a massive weight room, a rock climbing wall...  Our high school students also use these facilities for athletic competition.  It is not unusual to have a high school student get to school at 7:00 AM, be done with classes at 3:00 and leave school at 6:30 at night, after practice has concluded.  

The other thing that shocks European students about our public schools is the high level of technology in our schools.  We have one computer for every three or four students in our school.  We have elective classes that focus on web design, on multi-media design (usually short films) and classes that focus on computer programming.  We have digital video cameras (our school has maybe 10 that kids can use), proxima projectors, scanners...  Everything you could want or need.  Kids in the US in most public school usually take a word processing or basic computer class in middle school, or even earlier.  Technology is everywhere.  Almost every good sized high school in the US has their own web page.  Almost every kid has their own school e-mail account.  Almost every kid knows how to type and double click and surf the web to find information.

And, yes, about 75% of high school graduates go on to some education after graduating from high school.  In Wisconsin it is closer to 90%.  Kids go to Tech Schools, where they learn a specalized skill like Computer Aided Drafting, Nursing or Auto Repair.  Some go to four year colleges or universities to get a Bachelors Degree in Sociology, Computer Programming, Math or Art History.  Most jobs that require a Bachelors degree also require some additional education or certification.  I got my degree, then I had to get a teaching certificate after another 30 credits and a semester of student teaching.  Still other students will learn a trade as an apprentice, such as a plumber or electrician apprentice.  Other studnets will join the military.  Other studnets go to junior college and get an associates degree.  Some will graduate and try to find a job.  But almost everyone does something after high school.

[Dante]

Craig -  I think in a lot of areas, "..almost everyone does something after high school", but that is really not common all over.  As somone who grew up in a city-suburb (the suburb of Chicago I grew up in touches chicago and has a lot of "city features" such as the L train, etc, as opposed to a suburb like Schaumburg), I saw the whole range from Chicago public high schools (like Taft) to top of the line public high schools like New Trier.  

In Illinois, it really depends on how much tax money goes into your school system.  People in Evanston, New Trier, and Park Ridge (where I grew up) pay much higher property tax rates to get a much better school system than compared to the Illinois average.  I wouldn't be surprised if 95%+ of the New Trier students went to a 4-year college/university, but of all my friends who went to Chicago public schools, almost 40% of their classes (multiple schools) didn't even graduate high school (e.g. I had two friends who went to different Chicago public high schools, their freshman classes started with 400 and 450 respectively and graduated 250 and 275 respectively.  This is not uncommon for Chicago public schools).

In Illinois, the tax education dollars get spent more or less evenly, but it's the local property taxes in the local townships that raise the extra money that make suburban schools typically much better than the city or other suburb (that don't have higher tax rates for this) schools.

But yes, typically there are large computer labs and there is a STRONG emphasis on extracuricular activies such as athletics or music.

[Dr. Sylvan]

To add to Dante's point (coincidentally the exact same suburban region), these are stats I saw on one of the post-2000 classes at the high school I would have attended if I hadn't gone to IMSA, as well as some similar details about IMSA.

Lake Forest High School (very above average spending)

Student body: 1600+ (the freshman classes start out a little >400, so I assume there's few dropouts)
Matriculate to a postsecondary program: 88%
Spending per student-year: $14,000+

LFHS actually has a policy that there's a computer in every classroom, preferably more. There are several dedicated computer labs. (Keep in mind this is a pretty affluent town.) I know that even with the high property taxes, they have a fee of a few hundred dollars for being in an athletic program, as well as buying up to several hundred dollars of books per semester (depending on classes; science and math books tend to be insanely expensive). As to the division of funding, LFHS only receives 2% of its funding from state/federal government, the rest is all local. I gather that this is a highly atypical division of cost.

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

Student body: Each year starts at ~650, by the end of the year it's more like 600. IMSA has the special characteristics that (1) No one is added to a Class after the beginning of the first school year. (2) It's a three-year school--no ninth grade. (3) Each year everyone has to be reinvited on the basis that they're not failing multiple classes or having excessive discipline issues. (4) The capacity of the school is determined by capacity in the dorms, which caps the student body even more than the admissions application rate.

Matriculate to a postsecondary school: 99% (I think every year has that one or two kids who screwed up enough to not get in anywhere, or who have some other cause they're unable to go to school.)

Spending per student-year: Non-Residential - $14K, +Residential = $20K

IMSA has six computer labs I can think of, and each dorm has a half-dozen computers for the people who don't bring their own. These are geeks who would die if cut off from the internet, so the campus has two T3 pipes for 700 people. It's even more technology-oriented than LFHS, but that's explicable because of its math and science focus. Also, IMSA is owned and operated by the state of Illinois. I'm pretty sure they told us at one point that 14 (15?) other states had magnet schools with a similar pupose, though ours is the only 3-year one (most of the others are 2-year, IIRC). I know about a bajillion things about IMSA after living there for three years, so lemme know if the concept intrigues you.

[walkingdude]

The idea that there is no tracking in US schools isn’t entirely accurate. Most major cities in the US have magnet schools. The basic idea behind these is that public schools in cities tend to be under funded and terrible. So, cities create a number of separate schools that tend to specialize in certain fields and take the top students in those fields (top being determined by some admissions procedure either interview or test) and put them in schools that are grouped by interest/ability rather than by geographic district. Generally magnet schools are only found in cities because rural areas don’t have high enough population to make specializing economically feasible.

[BWM]

- VBMO: 3 years. Prepares you for MBO (practical education to become, say, an electrician)
- MAVO: 4 years.  

Just a small note...

VMBO takes 4 years and is the replacement of MAVO and VBO, taking the two together into one system...

[Bram]

So noted & edited.

Ofcourse all of what I said was an over-siplification, but you're justified in pointing out what was an outright mistake.

[dandan]

I must have missed the following:

US system - Entry to University - reading not required if you can play US football/basketball
UK system - Entry to University - considerably better offers if your school has freemason connections (unlimited offer from Cambridge anyone?)
UK system - post-graduate system - special  for Oxbridge - academic qualifications not so important if you can row
UK system - Public school = Private school
Slovak schools - similar to the US system but without the funding

Incidently I ended up with a B.Tech which is the equivalent of a B.Sc. plus D.I.S. (Diploma of Industrial Studies) but sounds like the vocational BTEC qualification. Bachelor is the name of the 'lower' degree in Slovak like the English Ordinary degree rather than an Honours degree so I have fun trying to translate my qualifications.

I would write up the UK system but there are multiple systems around with old style Grammar schools and Public (Private) schools typically using uniforms and being better than comprehensive schools. A few years ago just about any institute that offered higher education was changed into a University so Oxford City University is old Oxford Polytechnic.