In this GD thread, “Was the Soviet Union good in some aspects?” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=308729 – lots of Dopers spoke highly of its educational system, but The Punkyova stated:
I’ve heard that this wasn’t just a Communist thing. Something like it is actually the norm for educational systems in Europe, East and West. Is this true? Can any Eurodopers fill me in on the details?
Pardon me, I meant this thread for GQ. Mods, could you please move it? 
[Moderator Hat ON]
To GQ.
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The German system is similar in some ways.
There are slight differences from state to state, but I’ll describe the system in the two states where I went to school.
Elementary school (grade 1-4) was the same for all students. In grade four there wasn’t exactly a specific test, but an additional report card a few months before the regular end of the year. The grades were calculated from numerous tests, homeworks etc. in the months before that.
Based on the grades in certain “core” subjects students could be given a recommendation for a “Gymnasium” career. In the state where I lived at the time (conservative Bavaria), this “recommendation” was strictly required if you wanted to attend a Gymnasium. In Hessen it was just advice.
Without the recommendation the students attended either a “Hauptschule” (9-10 years total) or switched to a “Realschule” (10 years) two years later. Those are more business oriented and more demanding. Traditionally* those two types prepared for all non-academic professions.
The Gymnasium takes 13 years (12 in some states) and prepares for university. Students take two or three foreign languages and all classes aim at a more academic education. e.g. There are no “practical” classes like typewriting, computer use, bookkeeping, accounting etc.
There are ways to switch between those types of school, but ascending requires exceptional grades and in many cases students will lose time. In some states there are also schools that combine all types up to 10th grade. Btw private schools exist but they play a relatively minor role.
Do you have any specific questions? It’s a very broad subject.
In the Norwegian system, there’s no single test. Around the age of 15, in tenth grade (ninth grade under the old system), each pupil must decide if s/he will go on to upper secondary school (videregående skole), which school(s) to apply to, and, broadly speaking, which course of study to apply for. These courses include general academic courses, specialized academic courses (economics and business, for example), and a variety of trade and vocational courses. When more pupils apply for a course of study at one school than there is room for, those with the highest grades from lower secondary school (ungdomsskole) will be offered places first. Those grades will include grades from final exams in some subjects, but also the regular grades based on tests, homework, and classroom participation throughout the year.
A brief answer is that no, there is no uniform policy for education in Europe. Different countries tend to put emphasism in different types of schooling, sorting of children, value what type of knowledge is worthwhile.
In Spain, my experience is that there’s more value attached to theoretical learning, and less on practical use of that learning, i.e. learning a second language will involve more grammar and less actual talking and writing. A test in English might deal with answering questions about grammar or spelling rules (I before E, except after C) and not translating or forming sentences. Schooling in Scandinavian countries tend to go the other way.
Such a system used to be in place in Britain. Eleven-year-olds would take the ‘11 plus’ exam, those that passed went to Grammar Schools, and those that failed to Secondary Moderns. The former taught ‘academic’ subjects and put kids into the exam system, whereas the latter was ‘vocational’ and supposedly prepared children for the kind of job they were destined.
It was a stupid system - one exam at 11 isn’t an accurate prediction of anything. Anecdotal example: my aunt failed the 11+, and my grandparents paid for private education instead. She’s now a senior consultant in the Health Service.
This system was abandoned in most of the country, replaced with ‘comprehensive’ schools, on the principle that everyone gets the same opportunities in the same establishments. A few regions (Kent is one that I know of) retained the 11+, under the pretence that the failures now got to attend comprehensive schools which were supposedly equal. I’ve never understood the logic of that. In general, being accused of ‘increasing selection’ is a dangerous thing for politicians.
No such single test in Denmark. Students are graded after their 12 year of school, both by their teaches and by tests. Some university classes require high grades for admittance. The more popular the class and the smaller the number of people admitted the higher the grades required. If you want to work on a maternity ward help delivering children ( - not a doctor, don’t know what it’s called in English in Danish it’s “earth-mother”) you need really really good grades. While everybody and his halfwittede uncle Bob can become a rocket scientist. The chemistry, physic and mathematic departments are practically out there on the street shanghai innocent bystanders.
But the test isn’t final, you can always take some more classes and then retake it. Which some people waste years of their life trying to do, to get into their dream study instead of getting on with their life. All in all, a waste of time and talent.
Midwife.
That was only just recently phased out in Northern Ireland. I attended a Grammar school through the system.
Anecdotal example no. 2: One of my friend’s at the school got in with a C, or 3rd mark (I can’t remember what they were called in those days) whereas much thicker ignorant people got into the school with the A or 1st mark.
Those with the top marks are now being arrested for beating people with baseball bats and the like. My friend who scraped through is currently helping design an interface for a robotic surgeon at Queen’s University
Good point, I forgot about N Ireland (and should have known better than to say ‘Britain’, anyway - I’ve no idea what systems used to exist in Scotland)
Regarding to 11+ exam . I grew up in Coventry in the 50’s and everyone there (if it was thought they were good enough ) could have a second bite of the cherry at 13. I went down that path . I did manages to pass the 13+ was transferred from a Secondary Modern School ( where everyone left at 15 and did not take O levels) to one where we had the opportunity to take both O and A levels. The only downside was that we slipped a year in school , had two “second years” and took our O levels a year later than normal.
IIRC, though I should find some cites to back it up, when you teach anything mixed ability, the average attained ends up being lower than it would have been if people had been separated by ability.
Eg the C’s effectively drag down the A’s and B’s, resulting in a B/C average, rather than a B average.
“Late developers” are disadvantaged by selective education at an early age, but the simple remedy is continued assessment. There are quite a few people who are ahead of the crowd at age 9 or age 11, but end up being average/less than average. So pupils should be assessed regularly, and moved as appropriate.
Waves at BrainGlutton.
I think that in general, you are right. Notice that I did say “a more European system.” However, in the case of Slovakia, the educational system was definitely an import from the Soviet Union. Pre WWI, there was no nobility (all Hungarians), a miniscule mostly-German middle class, and a lot of illiterate peasants. Not a lot changed, educationally, until after WWII, when the Communists took over and built schools in every village.
At this point, I get a little hazy. My recollection is that Natalya Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, was a teacher and very interested in pedagogy. While the two of them were wandering around in exile, she looked into a lot of schools, and liked the German system. She fostered the three tiered school system in the Soviet Union (gymnasium, realschule, apprenticeship), and from there it came to Slovakia.
So yes, the actual genesis was European, but in Slovakia it came through the Soviet Union and picked up some Soviet characteristics. In a later post in the earlier thread I talked about the reliance on rote memorization and group collaboration, both of which struck European friends of mine as odd.
Most Soviets/East Europeans that I know are very class concious, in a way that Americans aren’t. I’ve had more than one tell me that no one who has been to gymnasium should know how to type, that is what the lower school students are for. (And yes, I’ve been in Slovakia and watched a secretary read e-mail off the screen and type the reply.) They also get angry at the idea of university students working, especially in “menial” jobs. My western European friends don’t get as upset. This seems to be something that came from the Communist system.
I know that there are a couple of Russian/Soviet bloc types on the boards, maybe some of them could give their impression of my impressions.
For the record, this isn’t confined to Europe/Middle East/Asia.
From 1991 to 1995, I attended Chapel Hill High School in Chapel Hill, NC. That school relied heavily on tracking. Presumably at least some other US schools do/did the same.
In my day, in high school, it wasn’t called tracking, and it wasn’t looked upon as tracking: it was different curriculums. The kids who’d done well in grade school would usually take college prep classes. Of the ones who’d done less well, and/or were not planning on college, some took vocational classes, and others took what were called “general” classes. Vocational, for girls, meant typing, shorthand, bookkeeping etc – preparation for “women’s jobs”. For boys, it was various things deemed appropriate for males. The general classes were often less demanding versions of the college prep classes.
Tracking was the term for what went on in grade school: everyone was in the same curriculum, but there was a smart track, an average track, and a dumb track. (I don’t know what the actual terms were.) I don’t know how widespread this was, but in some schools, first graders were tracked on the basis of their kindergarden performance.
Pushkin I went to a Grammar school in Northern Ireland too. Although testing at 11 is horribly crude, Northern Irish Grammar schools have always had better exam results than might otherwise be expected. The Grammar system is a very good one for the top 20% or so of students, but fails the others badly.
At my particular school, even though it was a Grammar school we also had streaming, with similar ability students put into the same form classes (home rooms) so that they took most subjects together, with options to be in different maths, english, science and language classes depending on ability. There were also different subjects available, with most in the top classes choosing Latin over Home Economics and Art over Technology, although it was a matter of student preference, and no judgements were made.
Basically the system is very discriminatory, but it does try to tailor the subjects and level of teaching to the individual requirements of the particular student. In my case the school went as far as allowing me to skip allegedly compulsory religious education classes in order to take an extra GCSE.
To be honest, if I had children in Northern Ireland now, I would send them to an integrated school, because I wouldn’t want them to go to a school based on religious affiliation or geographical location.
In France, there’s such a selection. Roughly, it works this way:
Kids enter in “college” at 11. After two years, at 13, part of them are “orientated” to apprenticeship (they learn some job, say, baker, in a business part time and get basic schooling the rest of the time). However, the proportion of students so orientated is very small (maybe some percents).
The rest ends “college” two years later, at 15. There’s then a second selection process. A part (normally the less gifted for academic fields) begins to prepare a “Brevet d’Education professionnelle” (professional education degree) that last for three years if I’m not mistaken. It’s similar to apprenticeship (part time school involving a significant part of technical teaching, part time working), except in a more technical field (say, solderer). I would guess the proportion is around 15-20%.
The 80% left enter “lycee”(high school), preparing a “baccalaureat” (high school diploma, required to enter university). However the “lycee” (three years long) is further divided into three categories :
-Professionnal “baccalaureat”
-Technical “baccalaureat”
-General “baccalaureat”
The first category involves more practical and less academic teaching than the second, which in turn includes more practical and less academic teaching than the third. Of course, a “general baccalaureat” is much “nobler” than a professional one.
These categories are further divided in more pecialized “series”. For instance, you can get a technical baccalaureat in optometrics or accountancy, etc… or a general baccalaureat in maths and physics or letters and languages, etc… The content of each serie is identical nationwide but very different for each serie (for instance, you could get, say, 9 hours/week of mathematics in the mathematic/physics serie, 4 in economics/social sciences serie, and a couple in letters/art serie, up to 4 languages in letters/ languages, but only one or two in the maths/natural sciences serie.
The “baccalaureat” is a nationwide examination at the end of high school, so it’s not different from school to school or from place to place. It just depends on what “serie” you enlisted.
In theory, you can enter university with any “baccalaureat”. In practice, you’re unlikely to suceed in, say, sciences if you got your “baccalaureat” in accountancy. I would also add that post-high school studies are divided in three main categories :
-Technical, two or three years long, preparing the student to an actual job and granting a “Superior technician degree” or something similar. For instance, our student with an accountancy “baccalaureat” could enlist in such a school for a better skilled and paid job.
-“Ecoles preparatoires” (preparatory schools, normally two years) followed by “grandes ecoles” (great schools, generally 3 years) preparing to highly skilled professionnal jobs, like, say, engineering or business.
-University, mostly orientated towards purely academic studies, and specialized from the first year. For instance, I began to study “sciences and matter structures” at the uni and from the first year after high school I only got maths, physics and chemistry teaching except for a couple hours of english and a couple hours of computer science.
I would add that the “nobler” of the three is normally not the Uni, but the “grandes ecoles”.
The orientation process isn’t abolutely compelling.
First because the school (the “teacher’s council”, more exactly) only makes recommandations, and it’s negociated with the parents/student. I don’t know how the situation is handled exactly in case of disagreement, but the general idea is to convince the parents that it’s better for a kid interested in lobsters to suceed in getting a professional diploma in cooking than to fail to get a “baccalaureat” in biology.
Second, because there’s always the option to “bridge” to another branch later. For instance, I know of a guy who was “orientated” towards a “professional education degree” (operating machine tools, or somesuch) when he was 15, completed it, decided to come back to high school and picked a “technical” baccalaureat, then entered a technical school and ended up with his “superior technician” degree, and eventually joined a preparatory and then an engineering school. But of course, these are the exceptions rather than the norm. Most students stay on their “tracks”.
This isn’t a bad system. I still resent the fact that in high school my family moved, and therefore I had to transfer from a “good” school system to a “bad” school system – here’s the catch: the “bad” school system was very well regarded as a good school system. It subscribed to some phony belief in “outcome based education” with a silly mission statement “all kids can learn.” I don’t know if this is the point of “outcome based education,” but it meant that everybody was equal. There were no college prep classes; no advanced placement. In my senior year there was nothing left for me to take. I took swimming, journalism, Pascal, Band, Jazz Band, Spanish, German, and French. Where’s the math? Where’s the science? History? Anything important?
We had a “tracking” system in the Netherlands as well, including the test around age 12. However, it was much more fluid than the OP describes; there were lots of opportunities to move to a higher or lower track at any time. For example, if you had poor grades at the end of your third school year, you’d be given the choice between doing the third year again in your current track, or moving to the fourth year in a lower track. Or if the work was obviously too easy for you, you’d move up to a higher track at the end of the school year or, in rare cases, halfway down the current year.
Also, as clairobscur describes, the outcome of that one test was really more of a recommendation, and your teachers had a lot of input as well. So it’s not like your entire career would be ruined because you had a bad day on the day of the test.
About the “class” thing: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that parents would be upset if their child dated someone from a lower class, but yeah, there was some stratification. The two highest tracks (preparation for white-collar work and university, respectively) would typically be in the same school building and mingle freely, but the vocational tracks were often in separate buildings and there was a bit of a social barrier – not a big one, though.
And yes, I’d say that having mediocre grades in the university-preparation track would be considered better than excelling in a lower track, because the former gave you more options and because despite what I may have suggested above, increasing your grades a little was much easier than getting moved to a different track.
All this information is obsolete, however, as there was a massive overhaul of the Dutch school system a couple of years ago, and I don’t know anything about the new system.