SERIOUSLY? | American Reacts to British Education System

Fun fact: most A level courses (history, English, geography, etc) are the same degree of difficulty you'd get at an American collage.

A big thing he totally missed is that the GCSE or Higher exams are national standard exams. Every student in the country sits the same exams for each subject. In the US and Canada it is up to each school or school district to set the exams each year.

This is out of date, you can no longer leave education at 16, you have to either stay in school, go to college, or do an apprenticeship until you are 18.

The grading system for Secondary School students has recently changed. Instead of A*, B, C grades etc it’s now graded 1 to 9 with 9 being the top grade.

Lots of this is only really true for England. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are different

The whole thing is different in Scotland, this is for England and Wales.

at 16 although you only do 9/10 subjects but most of these have 2/3 exams so you end up doing 20 + exams all in the space of around a month

You also have to wear a uniform for your Primary and Secondary school. If you do sixth form you can wear your own clothes but are expected to dress professionally. In college you can dress how you want.

Slight correction to the original video - Oxford and Cambridge (referred to jointly as Oxbridge) are considered to be the best two universities not only in the UK but to a large extent anywhere in the world. These are truly elite institutions and it is extremely hard to gain a place to study at either as an undergraduate (think close to impossible). The "Red Brick" universities he refers to are a group of six universities founded during the nineteenth century in major industrial towns like Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol. Originally, the term "Red Brick" was slightly derogatory as they were seen as inferior to the 'ancient' universities but today they are among the most prestigious and five of them are listed in the top one hundred universities in the world.

One thing to comment is that GCSEs are now graded on a scale from 9-1, instead A*-F

The joy of having a nation curriculum is that when we go to university we don't have to study anything but the thing that we're there for, since everyone in the class has the exact same education. When we apply to university we apply specifically for the subject we want, not like in America where you can figure it out when you get there. I applied for history and I studied history and only history for the entire three years I was there.

In the UK you need to have selected the subject you are going to study before you go to university. You are accepted to study for a particular course, not just to attend a particular institution.

In the UK, we essentially have to choose what field we think we'll need want to go into when we're young because there are some A Levels and degrees that you can't even apply for if you haven't already done the basic levels of that subject. I think it's horrible.

It’s probably worth mentioning that at the end of secondary school you dont have a graduation or a graduation certificate. When you complete your GCSEs that is an official qualification that you can take to a job. Any qualifications higher is to focus on one particular subject for a particular career.

Its changed since! Legally you have to be in either full time education or an apprenticeship until 18. This means that after gcses you either go to sixth form, a college, or get an apprenticeship until 18

I remember back home in Guyana - we go by that British system. And wearing uniforms was a good thing because you're more focused on the school work

Oxford and Cambridge (commonly known as “Ox-Bridge”) are not Red Brick Universities, they have their own entrance requirements in addition to the standard UCAS. The Red Brick Universities are the “Russell Group” Uni’s such as Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, and so on. These are Victorian or older, and are generally some of the best in the World. I’m not sure if St. Andrews and Edinburgh are included in that group, because they are Scottish, and also regularly appear in the top World Universities. On the subject of education, Scotland has always had a separate education system to the rest of the UK, and since Devolution Wales also has a separate education system from England.

One of the great things about the school I went to in England, was that we had a sixth form centre, which teachers were not allowed to enter. It was our space and we respected it.

The idea of our Public Schools costing tens of thousands of pounds a year must confuse the hell out of people from other countries. And the fact that Eton College is effectively a Secondary/High School.

Public school is not state funded school in the UK. It’s a fee-charging endowed school. The public means it’s open to anyone of the correct age no matter who they are if they meet the requirements and pay the fee. Typically the higher class children would attend. Private schools rely solely on charging a fee and don’t tend to use the national curriculum (only a private school can do this). Free schools are called state-funded schools, of which there are a number of different categories.