Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on November 16, 2007 at 10:14:27 from 217.33.157.34 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: TarBoard:educational, was Re: Fireworks and Responsibility ! posted by Owen Roberts on November 16, 2007 at 00:30:18:
I went to a country grammar school; the Fifth Form was the year in which one took Latin and other "O" levels; those who did insufficiently well at "O" level went into the Remove to re-sit, prior to being booted out. For us, the Remove, rather than the Fifth, was the abode of the behaviourally and intellectually challenged. The First Oration Against Catiline might well be an O level set text.
I certainly recall my departure from school. I celebrated an Open Scholarship to Cambridge in the fourth term of the Sixth by hanging a girlfriend's brassiere from the weathercock on the cupola over the Victorian-Tudor School Hall, and telephoning the local paper the following morning.
They sent a photographer; we got the front page.
The headmaster suggested that, since I had already matriculated, the school had nothing further to offer me and I should find a fresh field for my talents...
(It took the County Council two days, and a team of men with ladders, to get it down!)
My son goes to a country comprehensive school; his school counts in what I take to be the American manner, such that 11 year old entrants from junior school are in Year Seven, up to the end of Year Eleven (my Fifth Form), at which point they revert to the old grammar school style and have first and second year Sixths. Of course, only grammar school types are left in the school, at that point.