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Chalet School forms compared with year 7, year 8 etc

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#1: Chalet School forms compared with year 7, year 8 etc Author: Cryst,

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 8:31 pm
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I realise that it's not an exact science, but does anyone know how the classes in the CS (lower third etc) map onto year 7, year 8 etc please?

#2: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 9:11 pm
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The "standard" thing (sorry if this is stating the obvious) is Upper III, (Lower) IV, Upper IV, (Lower) V and Upper V for years 7 to 11 inclusive, but it always seems to get messy with the CS because there are a and b divisions of forms, plus you get people in forms with people who are 3 years older/younger than them!

Mary-Lou, aged 9 going on 10, starts off in Upper II, which is "right" going by the standard system (corresponding to year 5), and Peggy assumes (until they do badly in the tests!) that Polly at 15 will be in Upper V and Lalla at 13 going on 14 in Upper IV which would also be "right", so I'd assume that Upper III and Lower IV would correspond to years 7 and 8 as normal. Just that so many people end up in the "wrong" form for their age!

#3: Author: Rachel, Location: West Coast of Scotland

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 9:56 pm
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... but they are all in the right form for ability Wink

I always thought that sounded nice, being able to work at the right level rather than being forced to try and work above your capabilities or being bored senseless if the work was way below your own standard.

And on the form listings, don't forget the whole Inter V thing as well as all the a's. b's, upper's and lower's.

#4: Author: Cryst,

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 10:38 pm
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Thanks all, I think I'll ignore the a's ad b's!!

Is Inter V between Upper Fourth and Lower Fifth, or between lower and upper fifth?

And where do "middles" start and finish?

Rachel wrote:

I always thought that sounded nice, being able to work at the right level

Maybe nice for them, but it's jolly confusing for the rest of us!

#5: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 11:05 pm
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Inter V is after Upper Fourth which is the highest form in the Middle School. What strikes me is that if the A and B divisions are nothing to do with ability, after Upper Third at age 11/12 i.e. Years 7, the girls have to work through 8 forms in Fourth Year and 8 forms in Fifth Year. No woner there was that strange remove system or that Priscilla Dawbarn etc and others got left behind until their twenties!

#6: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 11:06 pm
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Inter V is below all other Fifths - it is the lowest Senior form. The Middles comprise all Thirds and Fourths therefore start at Lower III and end with top Middle Form - Upper IV

#7: Author: Ray, Location: Bristol, England

Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 10:49 am
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Unless you're reading some of the English based books, in which case the middle school seems to occasionally stretch as far as Upper V! (I can't remember which book I read THAT remarkable statement in - but there are several, including Bride, that have Lower V as a middle school form.)

Ray *boggled*

#8: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 11:32 am
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I think Middles started at Upper III, i.e. age 11, which would be the first year of secondary school in an "ordinary" school , because Mary-Lou whinged when Clem was put in Upper III because that meant she'd be a Middle not a Junior so they wouldn't see much of each other. It could've been different in Switzerland, though.

Inter V was a senior form and was supposedly for people who weren't up to proper "senior" work but were too advanced for "middle" work ( Rolling Eyes

), but I think EBD just created Inter V because otherwise the triplets would've been in Vb at the age of 12 and it would've been a bit daft.

Thinking back to when I was at school, it did feel as if there was a big divide between the 3rd year (Upper IV) and the 4th year (V), but that was because you started your GCSE work in the 4th year so you dropped certain subjects after the 3rd year - so I suppose there's a natural divide there in schools now.

Will stop waffling now!

#9: Author: Tiffany, Location: Is this a duck I see behind me?

Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 4:25 pm
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Alison H wrote:

Thinking back to when I was at school, it did feel as if there was a big divide between the 3rd year (Upper IV) and the 4th year (V), but that was because you started your GCSE work in the 4th year so you dropped certain subjects after the 3rd year - so I suppose there's a natural divide there in schools now.

There's definitely a psychological divide there, but i think my school had other divides too - you were in a different "section" of the school - I think it was Lower until year 9, then Upper for 10 and 11, but i can't remember clearly - and you got different privileges etc.

Until i read the Chalet books I'd never heard of "Middles" in the EBD sense... but they're about the right age to be at middle school, aren't they?

#10: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 4:51 am
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It's doubly confusing as somtimes you get Upper V and Lower V and sometimes the same forms are referred to as Va and Vb, which are different than UVa and UVb. Bride Leads, for example, is an utter mess when it comes to referring to forms.

The form names settle down in Switzerland somewhat. For a girl to graduate at age 18 she would (if turning 10 in U2) need to go

U2 -> L3 -> U3 -> L4 -> U4 -> Va -> Vb -> L6 -> U6

Some students go

U2 -> L3 -> U3 -> L4 -> U4b -> U4a -> I -> Vb -> Va -> L6 -> U6

so no wonder they're 20 by the time they leave school.

Poor Prudence Dawbarn Goes

U3 -> U3 -> ?? -> ?? -> ?? -> I -> I -> Vb -> Vb -> Va -> 6b

Getting held back three times, while Margot is

U3a -> L4b -> L4a/U4b -> I -> I/Vb -> Vb -> L6 -> U6 -> U6

tending to get left down at the beginning of the year and moved up a partway through and skipping Va altogether, which must have wreaked havoc with her curriculum.

The there's Mary-Lou

U2/L3 -> U3 -> L4/U4a -> U4a -> Vb/Va -> L6 -> U6

Who gets skipped up twice, and Clem

U3a -> L5 -> U5 -> 6 Shocked

There are also three places where an entire *form* jumps a form mid year.

#11: Author: Cryst,

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 7:58 am
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jennifer wrote:

... which must have wreaked havoc with her curriculum.

That's the snag with all this leaping around surely - they must just miss great lumps of stuff. Did anyone go to a school where this actually happened?? I think I remember an occasional girl being kept down a year, and new girls starting in a class below their age, but that's about it. No-one ever went up ahead of their age group.

Ah well, I think I now understand this well enough for my drabble - I need to get to know some girls who are in U3 and some in U4 during "Ruey". Off to the spreadsheet and the transcripts to do a spot of work. Or I might just invent some characters of my own!!

#12: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 8:56 am
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The only times I can remember people being kept down a year was if they'd missed most of a school year because of illness, and I think once someone decided they'd chosen all the wrong A-level options and decided to drop out and start again the following September.

No-one ever got moved up or down right in the middle of an academic year!

#13: Author: Fatima, Location: Sunny Qatar

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 9:02 am
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We have had children moved mid year in our school; they tend to get removed from normal classes and put into specials, then they can either go back with their original year group the following year, or jump ahead to the next. (Usually the former.) We have also had students who join the school and complete an academic year, do a make up exam over the summer and then skip a grade for the next year. A lot of the work we do is based around a reader, so you miss those vocab words and spellings, but that doesn't mean you can't do the reader of the grade above. Other subjects, like grammar and maths, are briefly reviewed each year, and then built upon, so you don't get left behind there either.

#14: Author: Nell, Location: exiled from the big smoke

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 10:31 am
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My father ended up two years ahead of himself because he had been advanced a year due to being very brainy - not sure which year that happened - but then when he was fifteen so I guess in his fourth year at the grammer school (where they took half their O levels in the fourth and half in the fifth) they moved to another town and thus to a different school and they didn't do the O levels he still had to take and as he had maths, english, history, geography and french (I think) they just started him on his A levels...he was just 15 his birthday being September.

#15: Author: Nina, Location: Peterborough, UK

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 11:31 am
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I went to school at a comprehensive in a predominantly Naval area, and people were always joining and leaving all through the year, but in the proper year for their age. Then when I was 3rd year senior (current Yr 9), we had a girl join mid-year who had come from Scotland. Not only had she been in a very good school, but she was also very clever, and despite being young for Year 8, had done all their work and some of the Year 9 work as well, so after a few weeks she was put with us. She therefore took her O levels at 14½ and her As at 16½ and went to Cambridge at barely 17. I lost touch with her after Os, but I heard that she went on to be an industrial chemist.

But she did face two problems. As well as the O levels, she took the CSE Dance course (there was no O level), but wasn't allowed to sit the exam because she wasn't between 15½ and 16½ - some quirk of the examining board! The other problem was that she was in sixth form with 17 and 18 year olds and her parents weren't happy about her socialising with them out of school, they kept her quite young really. I don't know how she got on when she went to Cambridge, I imagine it might have been a bit of a shock. I often thought she would have been better in a boarding school where she could socialise with her own age and do lessons with those of the same ability.

#16: Author: eamlunt,

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 12:00 pm
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My husband was put up a year when he was eight and stayed up all the way through (June birthday!). The was also a girl in my year at school who was born in march but a year young and one other similar that I know of. But that was private school and it cetianly wasnt common. the sickening thing is that they all did really well academically. However, socially it wasnt ideal.
My school has III, Lower IV, Upper IV etc. I think its something mostly found in the private system.

Beth

#17: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 1:40 pm
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Socially, it was a disaster! I was put up a year when I was 4 (largely because I could read, and was bored rigid in the kindergarten of the school I was at), and while it made very little difference while I was at Junior school, you try being still a child when your contemporaries are starting their periods and thinking about boyfriends and make-up..... sigh....

Husband had similar problems (not the periods and make-up, well, duh!), not helped, in his case, by his mother dying when he was 11.

#18: Author: eamlunt,

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 2:13 pm
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I know about the periods one. I was young for my year and late starting so the combined effect made it seem even later. I remeber very clearly being congratulated on growing up when they finally arrived. Very embarrassing!

#19: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 4:48 pm
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There was apparently some discussion when I was in about Grade 1 of skipping me up a year, but it was decided that I wasn't socially advanced enough to manage it (quite probably true). I did skip a year of math in high school - we were allowed to work ahead on the assignments, and by about October I was almost finished the coursework, so they let me work through the next semester - I did all the work and exams, just not in class.

I think math would be one of the harder ones to actually skip a whole year, particularly at senior levels. You need the material in one year to master the next year's material.

And I feel sorry for the triplets, stuck with girls several years older than they are - when they start in Switzerland they are over a year younger than the next oldest girls. In Inter V they're 12 and some of the other girls in their form are over 16 and many are 15, which is a huge gap in maturity, independence and physical development.

The only time the CS seems to care about girls being with their age mates is at the middle/senior divide - girls over fifteen aren't allowed to be in middle forms and girls under thirteen are not allowed in the senior.

#20: Author: francesn, Location: away with the faeries

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 4:53 pm
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It really is a social disaster....but thankfully I'm now in the right place, working on the assumption I took a Gap Year. But yeah - I could have graduated this year, but I would have had no fun at uni whastoever and that would have been bad.

#21: Author: leahbelle, Location: Kilmarnock

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 8:53 pm
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The form issue gave me a right nightmare when writing "Jessica", so I emmm, ignored it for the greater part! It was too big a headache and gave me several sleepless nights!

#22: Author: RuthY, Location: Anyone's guess

Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 10:32 am
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Well in here in Scotland the years work differently from in England so I have enough trouble working out what your talking about when you say year 8, year 9 etc. Here we have primary school P1-P7 and Secondary School s1-s6. We start primary school aged 4/5 and secondary aged 11/12. We take standard grades in s4(aged 15/16), highers in s5(aged 16/17) and more highers or advanced highers in s6(aged 17/1 Cool

You are aloowed to leave school once you have sat your standard grades + are 16 or at the end of s5 or you can stay until the end of s6. I have a friend born in early march one year and a friend born in late march a year and a month later(this is only because she started school in Germany where the School system is different0. My mum's friend's child skipped p2 as she was thought to clever but found it very difficult socially, I don't think it helped that she is a very small person anyway.

Sorry to go completely off topic. In regards to the Chalet School I just try not to think to closely about how the forms must have worked!!

#23: Author: Róisín, Location: Gaillimh

Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 1:29 pm
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Ditto to RuthY, except with another different school system. Someday I'll get someone to explain it *all* to me Laughing

#24: Author: RachelD, Location: Norwich, UK

Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 10:00 pm
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My daughter's school has a similar numbering system to that of CS:

Reception (4-5 yrs)
Kindergarten (5-6 yrs)
Lower 1 (6-7 yrs)
Upper 1 (7-8 yrs)
Lower 2 (8-9 yrs)
Upper 2 (9-10yrs)
Lower 3 (10-11 yrs)

They are in the Junior Department.

After that it's:
Upper 3
Lower 4
Upper 4
Lower 5
Upper 5
Lower 6
Upper 6

They are the senior department - but I know there is split between upper 4 and lower 5, so I suppose like the middles at the CS.

#25: Author: Rob, Location: Currently in a rainstorm

Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 10:04 pm
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Code:

Chalet English    Scottish
Juniors    Primary Primary Age

   Reception P1 4-5
Kindergarten Y1 P2 5-6
Lower I    Y2 P3 6-7
Upper I    Y3 P4 7-8
Lower II    Y4 P5 8-9
Upper II    Y5 P6 9-10
Lower III    Y6 P7 10-11

Middles    Secondary Secondary

Upper III    Y7 S1 11-12
Lower IV    Y8 S2 12-13
Upper IV    Y9 S3 13-14

Seniors

(Inter V)
Lower V    Y10    14-15
Upper V    Y11 S4 15-16
Lower VI    Y12 S5 16-17
Upper VI    Y13 S6 17-18

In England you begin to work towards GCSEs (formerly O-Levels) in Y10 (taking them in Y11), take AS levels in Y12 and more AS levels/A Levels in Y13. Working from what RuthY said, in Scotland you take Standard Grades in S4, Highers in S5 and more Highers/Advanced Highers in S6. In both England and Scotland you can leave school once you are 16 and have taken GCSEs/Standard Grades – this is equivalent to leaving the CS straight from Upper V. In England the changes to the name of the “sixth form” haven’t really caught on so Lower VI and Upper VI are still used in common parlance for Y12/Y13.

ETA - Sorry the columns are a bit wobbly but I couln't find another way to post a table!

#26: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 2:41 am
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And for reference, in US/Canada

Level Central Age
Pre-Kindergarten - 4
Kindergarten - 5
Grade 1 - 6
Grade 2 - 7
Grade 3 - 8
Grade 4 - 9
Grade 5 - 10
Grade 6 - 11
Grade 7 - 12
Grade 8 - 13
Grade 9- 14
Grade 10 15
Grade 11 - 16
Grade 12 - 17

In my district, elementary school was kindergarten -> grade 7, with 1-3 known as primary and 4-7 as secondary. Then there was either a high school (8-12) or a junior high and then a senior high (8-10 and 11-12).

The end of elementary can be from grade 6-8, and some places have a middle school - grades 6-8 separately. There are variations between provinces and states, and sometimes between school districts. The starting date depends on the age as of January 1, so there's a three year range of typical ages - a grade 10 student might be 14 when entering, or 16 when leaving.

In Canada it's "Grade X" while in the US it's "Xth Grade". The US uses freshman/sophmore/junior/senior to refer to four year high schools (and university), while Canada uses the grade, and in university the year (1st year -> 4th year) to refer to the level.

#27: Author: Róisín, Location: Gaillimh

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 12:46 pm
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Oh I smell an excel chart coming on... Very Happy

Here's the Irish, for comparison:

(ages in brackets)

Primary School

Babies/Junior Infants [4]
Senior Infants [5]
1st Class [6]
2nd Class [7]
3rd Class [8]
4th Class [9]
5th Class [10]
6th Class [11]

Secondary School

1st Year [12]
2nd Year [13]
3rd Year [14] (Junior Cert. year if doing education through English)
4th Year [15] (Junior Cert. year if doing education through Irish; otherwise 'Transition' year, where you do practical work experience etc)
5th Year [16]
6th Year [17] (Leaving Cert. year for everyone)

ETA: forgot to say that primary and secondary are nearly always separate schools and never ventures run together, IYSWIM.

#28: Author: Loryat,

Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 7:04 pm
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Mrs Redboots wrote:

Socially, it was a disaster! I was put up a year when I was 4 (largely because I could read, and was bored rigid in the kindergarten of the school I was at), and while it made very little difference while I was at Junior school, you try being still a child when your contemporaries are starting their periods and thinking about boyfriends and make-up..... sigh....

Husband had similar problems (not the periods and make-up, well, duh!), not helped, in his case, by his mother dying when he was 11.

Has anyone seen Almost Famous? The kid in that is two years younger than evryone else in his year so while they're all going through puberty he is literally still a child. He thinks he's a year older than he actually is, and when he whines about it to his mom she eventually confesses that she put him into school when he was four or whatever a year younger than the normal age would be, and then he got skipped a grade.

Funnily enough there were triplets in my year at school (all boys though) who were insanely clever and were a year younger than just about everyone else but still came top in everything. They didn't seem to have any problems with being so young, although actually one boy behaved really badly...maybe the fact that he was so young had something to do with it.

I was always exactly the right age cos my birthday's in July, but my next brother was quite young as his birthday was in December. My next two brothers are older than most people as their birthdays are in March and January, and my wee-est brother's birthday is in November so he's young. Because my brothers birthdays are all in the November-March bracket they could be in one of two years and it was up to my mum and dad and nursery teachers when they started school.

I'm not sure if the Chalet School has the rigid type of curriculum we have in schools nowadays, and being a private school it'd probably be more relaxed anyway. I've read other school stories where there are girls kept back or moved up and so on, and in some Enid Blyton books it can be quite confusing as girls move up from term to term and people who are sometimes their form-mates are then in the forms above or below. In an adorable book my mum got me out a charity shop, called 'A Disgrace to the Fourth', the heroine Micky is about two years younger than everyone else but was far too advanced for her own age group. She only 'goes down' in algebra and geography. So this type of thing wasn't just an EBDism.

Actually though I have always found the form system very confusing as girls seem to be in the fourth at about fourteen and then there are only the fifth and sixth forms for all the fifteen, sixteen seventeen and eighteen year olds!

#29: Author: alicat, Location: Wiltshire

Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 10:11 am
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I alwasy thought it must be so much better to be able to work at your own level, also I love the way the CS recognises that it is perfectly possible for people to be excellent at one subject and complete idiots at another!
I suffered all my school career from teachers expressing loud disbelief about how I could be 'so good' at English and 'so bad' at maths. Curiously none of the maths mistresses ever thought about the fact that they were failing to make their subject attractive....until I got to 14 when I found one who did but lots of damage to my self esteem and progress had been done by then.
As for middles, in some parts of england about 30 years ago they tried having a Middle School system, where instead of having primary or infant/junior then secondary you went to a primary, then a middle school at 9/10, which is now Yr 6 at primary school, and stayed there until you were 13/14, what is now the end of Yr 9, and then went to a college (as secondary schools were then renamed) for O and A levels. It turned out to be another of those fine in theory rubbish in practice educationalist ideas, which could mean you went to four schools if you lived where there was the infant/junior system.....can't think how this was supposed to be a better system but it was phased out pretty fast...
the weirdest example I ever found of people moving school years was when we were at school aged about 13/14, before we did o levels anyway, and the chance was offered one of us in September to do a year-long American exchange, starting immediately....lots of us went for it, and the girl who was picked had a great time, but when she came back next September she was horrified to find they had put her with the year below us to make sure she didn't miss the English work - presumably anything she'd learnd in America was not considered to to have any academic value! It made life very difficult for her socially for the rest of her time at school and probably negated any value she got from the trip...incidentally the American replacement we got was a real eye-opener to us, when I met her I thought immediately of Corney Flower, she was huge, with such a loud voice (we were all taught to follow Miss Annersley's strictures on this) and moaned the whole year about how boring England was and that we didn't have Macdonalds.
right, will stop rambling now and do some work.....

#30: Author: Loryat,

Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 6:14 pm
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alicat wrote:

I alwasy thought it must be so much better to be able to work at your own level, also I love the way the CS recognises that it is perfectly possible for people to be excellent at one subject and complete idiots at another!

When I did Higher Art we had a written exam as well as practical assessment, and just about everyone was rubbish at it. The teachers had some mad theory that everyone who was good at English must also be good at writing about art. There were three people in the class with 1's for English and I was one of them, so for the whole year I got told 'you got a 1 for English so you should be getting As for this'. I mean, I could write about books but I didn't know the firstthing about paintings!

#31: Author: Chelsea, Location: Your Imagination

Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 6:19 pm
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This makes me thankful for our system. You start in grade 1 and finish in grade 12. No Upper/Lower/A/B etc.

The division of schools - elementary,middle, and high school and differ by region though.

#32: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Sat May 27, 2006 4:34 pm
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Hi, I just joined the board today, and this is my second post.

My sister and I went to a small private primary school and we were both in the 'wrong' year for our age. My sister not so much, as her birthday is in October, but mine is in April, so I was several months younger than the next youngest.

That school mixed up ages quite a lot. In the top year, when pupils would normally be aged 10-11, I was only 9-10, but there were a couple of girls who were 11-12. They weren't put in for the 11+ because they were thought to have no chance of passing, and were just going on to the senior part of the school.

My sister and I stayed in the wrong year all through grammar school, largely I think because the grammar school people didn't pick up on it.

I've read or been told that having children in the wrong year for their age is less common now, at least at secondary school, because results for league tables are only counted for children of the right age. Don't know if it's true.

Jay B.

#33: Author: Katherine, Location: London, UK

Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 2:26 pm
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JayB wrote:

I've read or been told that having children in the wrong year for their age is less common now, at least at secondary school, because results for league tables are only counted for children of the right age. Don't know if it's true.

Jay B.

Welcome, Jay!

I think that they count league table results for all the kids who 'should' be doing the exams (i.e. are the 'right' age). Which means that if you did yours a year early you count as a pupil but not as having passed you exams, even if you got straight A*s. Thus bringing down the average scores.
Crazy.

The CBB -> Joey's Trunk

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