(no subject)

[sapote]

So does anyone on my friendslist want to talk to me about British things? For that manner, was anyone a queer British teenager in the 80s/early 90s? Or know anyone who was? I have this idea that other countries might be different than my own.

Comments

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

oh, man, thanks! This is a pile of information to sort through (and I have a Canadian being very helpful on google talk). I really appreciate it. So basically someone who was going to be prime minister in 2005 would have had to get into a grammar school, and then ... I don't know what the intermediate steps are, something about A levels? then go to a good university, and then all that working-your-way-through-the-system bit?

Thanks again for helping, tacit and folk!

[tacittype.livejournal.com]

He/she wouldn't have *had* to go to a grammar school, but it is more common. Private schools are the most common route into politics, I suspect. They don't always have an entrance exam.

It goes: GCSEs at 16. Normally between nine and eleven of those, each graded from A (or A*) to F. I think - not sure what comes lower than E, there are some other letters that I never really understood the point of. N? U? Whatever. Anyway, you usually need five A to Cs to go on to A-levels.

A-levels at 18. These are often taken at a college, but my school went up to 18. Most don't. Back then, you'd take 3 or 4, graded as above.

University is generally three years for a bachelors, four for a masters. As folk said, the Oxbridge set is more traditionally political. There's also a hardcore of boys' private schools that have more than their fair share of politicians - Eton, Harrow, Winchester. I used to go out with a guy who went to Winchester, and he was probably the poshest guy I ever met. He wore braces to work. God.

It's actually a bit different for the poshest of private schools. We go to primary school from 4 to 11 and secondary school from 11 to 18. They start prep school at 8 until 13, then go to Eton or wherever from 13 to 18.

[folk.livejournal.com]

Okay, educationally speaking, think Harry Potter. I'm going to assume that you don't mean Harriet Jones to be educated in public school (i.e., private/independent school), because this changes a bit if you do.

At 13, you have the Common Entrance exams, which get you into Grammar School or a comp(rehensive). I didn't take them because I went to public school and did scholarship exams instead.

At 16, you have the real-world equivalent of OWLs, which were called O-levels until the mid 80s and GCSEs afterwards. These are somewhere around 9 subjects, and I'm sure there's an excellent wikipedia page on them. After these, you can legally leave school.

At 18, you have A-levels, and there are three of them for most people. There are no core subjects, and you can take what you like. Back in the time period we're talking about, universities would have been more selective about what you could take to get into, say, Oxford's PPE (Politics, Philosophy & Economics), which is the primo politico degree. Say a language (French, Latin), English and then something else (Politics if the school offered it, History, Geography, that sort of liberal art thing).

After that, there were S-levels, I think, which were what you needed to get into Oxbridge. I don't know very much about these, because they'd fallen out of usage by my time (*waves stick*).

Okay, questions on this part?