Posted by Alan Hakim on November 01, 2005 at 11:49:49 from 213.166.17.22 user awhakim.
In Reply to: Re: School Forms, was Fairy Tales .... posted by John Wilson on November 01, 2005 at 06:32:28:
Just to add to the confusion, at my school there were three 'entry' years:
Fourth form - for those who just scraped in.
Shell - for the average ability.
Remove - for the very bright.
BUT once you were in, you went up a year at a time, eventually reaching the Lower Fifth, which was O-level year. There were several parallel Shell and Remove forms - and Lower Fifths.
Exceptionally dim boys did more than one year in the fourth form before going up to the Shell.
So any idea of pupils being removed downwards was clearly no longer true by that time.
John is right that Wellington College in England was largely aimed at boys looking for a military career. It was only after he died - I was only 6 at the time - that I learned that my grandfather had gone to Wellington. He was the least military of men. I often wonder how he had got on there.