Question came up because of the use of the term in the Malaysian educational system, which probably got the term from the English educational system, and I think I’ve seen it in English literature.
Maybe Billy Bunter was in the 2nd Remove? What would that have meant?
Billy Bunter was in the Remove in the Greyfriars stories, which in that case was equivalent to the Lower Fourth Form.
The Sixth Form is the oldest boys, 17-18, so the Lower Fourth would be about 14-15 years old.
It seems that the term ‘Remove’ indicated a form between other forms, but the exact meaning varied from one school to another.
Ah.
In the Malaysian system the ‘remove’ was an extra year added for English learning, for students coming up from the Malay or Mandarin language systems.
I suspect that Billy Bunter may not have been exactly ‘held back’, but perhaps wasn’t advancing towards the next exam as fast as some other students. – a subtlety I missed first time around.
Yes, in the old-style private schools and grammar schools, the “Remove” was usually for the slower developers, who weren’t likely to make it into the Sixth Form (preparing for university entrance), and would be likely to leave early to go into a business or the armed forces. I think the term died out in the 50s, following reforms to the structuring of general school-leaving qualifications.
When I read the comics, I was in the fourth form and at my school (Grant Maintained) there were no ‘removes’. It was upper or lower.
I never really thought about the meaning of ‘remove’. I just assumed that it meant, in modern terms, ‘remedial’.
So Harry Wharton & Co weren’t the brightest and best either! 
The author, Charles Hamilton (aka ‘Frank Richards’) came from a poor family, the sixth child of eight. He went to a local ‘public school’ of a kind, with less than 100 pupils, and which closed down a couple of years after he left. He was writing stories for a boys’ magazine for a living at the age of 17.
He always refused to discuss his own schooling, but we can guess that he identified with the Remove boys, as being not quite the ‘top class’.
The Greyfriars stories (all 1683 of them!) can be found here.
Well, that was part of the point of Grant Maintained schools, wasn’t it? The ‘removed’ kids went to Comprehensives?
I attended a Grammer School in Melbourne (not in the UK) that was 1/3 remedial, but like you, we didn’t have any special names.
Not really. GM status fell somewhere between State and private (confusingly called public) schools. It was mostly to do with funding and being GM gave the governing body freedom to run the school without interference from the Local Authority.
The school I attended was a boarding school that was originally an orphanage and there was a wide range of abilities in what was a very small school. There were only 200 or so of us between the ages of 11 and 17.
For 3 years in the 60s I attended a school that had 2 Removes as regular forms. Students spent a whole year in 2nd Remove and then 2 years later, in 3rd Remove.
The school was Northlands, a private all-girls school in Argentina that prided itself on its British connection and regularly brought in several young staffers from England and Scotland on 2 year contracts. There must have been 100 students at each grade level. It went all the way from Kindergarten to a 6th Form for students taking A levels. Morning classes were all in English and afternoon in Spanish, which fulfilled the Argentine government regulations. A handful of us, foreigners who didn’t need to graduate with an Argentine diploma, had English classes in the afternoon as well.
As far as I remember the youngest form was 1B and then moving upward, 1A, 2 Remove, 2B, 2A, 3 Remove, 3B, 3A, 4B, 4A, 5B, 5A and then an optional 6th Form for 17-18 year olds who wanted to take A levels and go on to university.
Actually all of these should be in Roman numerals. When I started at the school I was in III B and the form just below us was III R.
On the other hand, here’s a fictional example of a school, Antonia Forest’s Kingscote, that has a Third Remove for students who are less advanced for their age than III A and III B. A major plot point is that the 12 year old twins “had expected to start their careers in form IIIA–after all, the rest of the family had done so–but to their horror they were placed in the Third Remove”. And the other IIIrd forms look down at the Remove students.
We should perhaps note here that Frank Richards’ public school stories were aimed at a readership which was not going to go to public school, and were never likely to afford to. It presented its readers with a sort of caricature public school world that was rather different from the real one. Actual public schoolboys did not read this stuff.
Just to add, in Antonia Forest’s Kingscote series linked above, the Remove is a temporary form for some. The twins, who arrive at school poorly prepared, improve to the point that they’re promoted to IIIA after the 2nd of the 3 terms for the year.
That would be similar to the Malaysian example? Form 3 would be roughly equivalent to English form 3, form 6 to form 6, but 2 extra years were taken because of the bi-lingual education?
[Tangent: In an older educational model, students moved up when they mastered the material. In the model almost universally used now, students move up with their age group, because it was found to be generally a more effective model than artificially locking advancement to achievement. New Zealand (I think) uses a grade school model where all children start exactly when they turn ? 5 ?, then advance to the next grade somewhere between 0 and 2 years later.]
I don’t think that the purpose of the Removes at the school in Argentina was remedial education for bilingualism. Adding it up it looks like a standard 12 years?
There was a very wide range of English ability, from students whose families were originally from the British Isles and spoke it fluently, to others who never really became fluent despite hearing it every day for many years. And these included students in the “top” section". Every form had 3 sections streamed according to ability, numbered 1 to 3, like IV B 1, IV B 2, IV B 3. I remember wondering how it could be that some of the girls in IV B 1 could hardly speak English.
It took them 2 years to go from 2 to 3?
(In Malaysia, ‘remedial’ would not have been the right word for improving third language skill)