I need your help creating a school age/year/grade translation table

Aug. 17th, 2010 at 3:58 PM

I spend quite a lot of time having to convert, in my head, USian grades, UKian year numbers or AUSian year numbers to the school year structure that I know more intuitively because it is what I experienced as a child/teen in the 70s-90s. I started Infants 1 at age 4, spent my 6th year (age 5) in the US at kindergarten and then back in the UK. I read on LJ about your kids in the US/AUS and hear about my nieces and nephews in the UK now and cannot translate the current year/grade numbering systems into ages or numbers that I understand. I do remember that back in the 70s kids started grade school at age 6 and so have assumed that Grade 1 - age 6, but I am sure that this may be out of date.

So, can you guys help me to fill in this table? I may need to add a column for AUS if it differs from the UK system now.

<table>

Age	UKian 80s	UKian now	USian
4-5-6	Infants 1st year	Year ?	Grade ?
6-7	Infants 2nd year	?	?
7-8	Juniors 1st year	?	?
8-9	Juniors 2nd year	?	?
9-10	Juniors 3rd year	?	?
10-11	Juniors 4th year	?	?
11-12	Seniors 1st year/form	?	?
12-13	Seniors 2nd year/form	?	?
13-14	Seniors 3rd year/form	?	?
14-15	Seniors 4th year/form	?	?
15-16	Seniors 5th year/form	?	?
16-17	Lower 6th form	?	?
17-18	Upper 6th form	?	?
18-19	Uni 1st year (freshers)	?	?
19-20	Uni 2nd year	?	?
20-21	Uni 3rd year	?	?

Current Location:Horsham, UK
Current Mood: sore

Comments

( 15 comments — Leave a comment )

Aug. 17th, 2010 03:02 pm (UTC)

4 would be pre-school, which not all children attend.

Some start Kindergarten at 5, some at 6.

Then we do grades 1 - 12, graduating high school at 17 or 18.

Then a 4-year Bachelor's degree would be a certain middle class and above standard. Some people only go for AA's (two-years) if at all).

Generally the grouping is grade school is K - 5, junior high is 6 - 8, high school is 9 - 12, but there are variances in all of this.

High school, and the four years of college/university (same thing to us), each are also called freshman, sophomore, junior, senior years.

Does that help?

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natf

Aug. 17th, 2010 06:36 pm (UTC)

Re: US

Thank you!

It does seem that things have changed a little since I was in Texas for 8 months in '73, then.

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kalorlo

Aug. 17th, 2010 05:18 pm (UTC)

Heh, can't help much with that unless you want the Scottish years too!

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natf

Aug. 17th, 2010 06:36 pm (UTC)

Are Scottish years so different from the rest of the UK?

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kalorlo

Aug. 17th, 2010 06:46 pm (UTC)

The split is different - it goes primary 1-7, then secondary school 1-6. Secondary school is called S1, S2 or first year, second year etc, but primary's called P1 or primary 1 and so on. You can get into university on your fifth year results if you want, though most people don't, and a degree is generally four years.

Actually, Wikipedia has a very handy table! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Scotland

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natf

Aug. 17th, 2010 11:12 pm (UTC)

Thanks for the link!

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siliconshaman

Aug. 17th, 2010 05:22 pm (UTC)

UK goes by years now.

So age 5 would be Year 1, this goes though to 15-16 which is Year 11. [there's no distinction between infant, junior and high school now.]

After that it's 6th form or technical collage, which is lower and upper, or sometimes year 1 & 2...and then the numbering system restarts for University, so Year 1,2,3 [and sometimes 4]. Post doc is indefinite...

Although if the new government goes ahead with making collage mandatory and raising the school leaving age, apparently the numbering system will extend though to that, so it would be Years 12 & 13, [and maybe 14] followed by Uni.

Edited at 2010-08-17 05:25 pm (UTC)

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bill_badger

Aug. 17th, 2010 06:31 pm (UTC)

In schools which have sixth forms, they already talk about years 12 & 13 (what was lower & upper sixth when I was at school - not that I was brainy enough for sixth form).

There is also reception class in the first year of what we would have known as infants.

To further complicate matters, they also group them into key stages. So:

Key stage 1 = reception, years 1 & 2 = infants = ages 4-7

Key stage 2 = years 3 to 6 (years 3-7 in Scotland where they spend an extra year in primary education and one less year in secondary) = primary or junior school = ages 8 to 11 (8 to 12 in Scotland)

Key stage 3 = secondary education prior to GCSE exams. This is where it can get tricky. In some English schools this is years 7 to 9 (ages 11 to 14), while in others it is only years 7 & 8. In Scotland, as far as I'm aware it is still years 8 & 9.

Key stage 4 = secondary education (GCSE) = years 10 & 11, or 9 to 11 depending on schools GCSE policy.

Possibly sixth form is also called key stage 5, although I never heard the term used when the son & heir was in sixth form.

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natf

Aug. 17th, 2010 06:38 pm (UTC)

Ah, awesome. Thanks!

*ponders how best to draw a shiny table of all of this so that I can visualise it*

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siliconshaman

Aug. 17th, 2010 06:39 pm (UTC)

Colours perhaps?

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bill_badger

Aug. 17th, 2010 06:57 pm (UTC)

Where's Arnold Rimmer and his paintbox when you need them? :-)

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siliconshaman

Aug. 17th, 2010 06:38 pm (UTC)

It's been over a decade since my daughter was at school, so odds are my info is out of date... but I though key Stages we're less used as conversational indicators, as years.

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bill_badger

Aug. 17th, 2010 06:53 pm (UTC)

This might help: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/parents/national_curriculum_key_stages/

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natf

Aug. 17th, 2010 11:12 pm (UTC)

Thank you again!

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