Comparing British and American Education Systems

Easy Dreamers welcome back to another video with me Teacher Tom and Jess from Love and London. Hello. Welcome back. Thank you. Good to have you here. Today we're comparing the British education system with the American education system because a lot of you guys have asked me, you're very interested, so I thought we'd compare and contrast. We're not experts necessarily but we have been through the education systems. Yes, some would say. Yeah, so yeah we'll try our best to give you as much information as we can. So first of all my question to you is what age do you start school in America? So everybody starts at five and that's kindergarten. That's the first official grade. but also most kids will be put into preschool which is when you're three and four but that's usually not public that's usually paid for by your parents okay cool yeah and we start yeah between four and five here and we have you in nursery beforehand oh so when I was in school um elementary started around nine and then middle school and high school and we'll get into that in a bit started earlier and earlier so high school um there was one year where I had to be at school for 7 30 and my bus came at 6 30 so it was like really early but i think they're changing that now and they're kind of trying to adjust that because it's quite early yeah you just mentioned school buses there that's something that is in my mind when i think about american schools is that big yellow school bus is that a thing yeah yeah oh yeah did you take that yeah yeah yeah basically i have dreams about them still which is really weird that i keep missing them and but yeah that's like all through school until you're like allowed to drive to school if you're allowed to drive to school then you take them okay cool yeah i don't we have school buses here but only in more rural areas mostly you just kind of walk to school or if you're in london take a bus um what different types of schools do you have so you mentioned was it elementary school yep so elementary is where you start and you do that for kindergarten to fifth grade where you're up till 10 and then most places will have a middle school which is 11 to 13 years old and then you'll do high school which is 14 to 8 17 Okay and then you move on to college after that. Yeah, exactly. But university, yeah. Yeah, we'll go into that. Yeah. Here in Britain we have primary school and then secondary school. That's pretty much it. Yeah, the only two. I'd like to know about free versus sort of paid education systems. What are the names for those there? Yeah, so if you go to the school that you... the free school, it's called public school. So that's what I did. I went to public school and then then if you your parents are paying for it for you it's private school okay aha now that's so confusing for us because we have our free schools are state schools we also have free schools but there's something else that yeah we'll go to another time but then our paid schools are private schools but then we also have public schools which are not free they're quite the opposite they're the most expensive schools so we have things like Eton and Harrow I think Prince William and Prince Harry Went to Eton, which is a public school. So it sounds like it should be free, but it's the opposite. It confuses me every time I hear it, because I don't understand why you would call it public when it is completely the opposite of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. So at school, do you have to wear uniforms? Is that a thing in the States? Mostly if you go to public school. So free school, you don't. I never wore uniforms when I went to school. If you go to a private school, generally they do, because a lot of private schools are Catholic schools, or based on some kind of... kind of religion but yeah when I was growing up all the private schools around me they all wore uniforms. Okay in a lot of the American TV shows I've seen there are kind of like groups of people and you've got like the geeks and the jocks. Oh the jocks! Yeah what can you explain to us like what what the group because I was thinking about like there are sort of unwritten rules for uniforms right like if you're a jock if you're a goth if you're you know something else a geek you have to wear certain types of clothes But is that a thing in the States where you have like these groups of kids? Yeah, it is. It's not like how it is in the films It's definitely I would well at least where I went to school. I felt like that was quite over dramatized But sports is a really really big thing in most especially public schools especially for boys in public schools they So and then there's a lot of like camaraderie around the American football team some of the other teams especially if they're really good so I would say like the sports the jocks are which no one actually calls them the jocks when you're in school um but this people who play sports very much stuck together and then just like anywhere in life really it just everyone kind of comes together by their common interests so okay all right so yeah so it's not as exaggerated as you know um some of those shows no I mean not where I went to school So it could be different other places, but and some schools have more of a lean towards Especially around like LA they have more of a lean towards the dramatic arts So that's a much bigger group than the people who do sports. So it just depends. Okay, but high school sport is a big thing Yes, yeah, really big thing. There's even a TV show on Netflix, but it's all about like the American football teams of high schools and they kind of follow the trials and tribulations of each team. But yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it sounds like it's like a big thing. There's like bands. and cheerleaders and yeah yeah yeah i mean and they usually american football is the biggest team it depends on the school because some schools have better soccer teams it feels weird for me even to say soccer um or some of them have better baseball teams but usually there's the biggest camaraderie around american football and like we do things called a pep rally where it kind of like opens the season and it gets everyone excited and like you said there's cheerleaders i did dance team and we did performances at the football games also basketball games and that's where like they have the biggest bleachers usually for people to sit and watch and it's a whole thing right right it's funny actually even comparing the sports like you're talking about American football basketball baseball these are the big sports right whereas in British schools we're talking about football or soccer as you said rugby cricket basketball to an extent maybe netball things like that so different sports as well and going back a little bit to the grades or years so you you call them grades right so yes when you enter school what's how does it work yeah so kindergarten is the first one like we've spoke about before and that's when you're five and then the next one when you're six is first grade and then it just keeps going up to 12th grade okay and then when you get to high school that um the freshman sophomore junior senior thing kicks in so freshman is when you're 14 that's ninth grade 10th grade sophomore 11th junior and senior is 12th grade. That's in high school? Yeah. Oh, okay. So you have that in high school and in college as well. Exactly. Oh, interesting. Okay. So in Britain we have reception is the first year that's four to five and then it's class one, two, three or year one, two, three continuing, um, through to 12. Okay. I think, yeah, I'll double check that, but yes, I think so. Uh, what exams do you guys have? So we, it kind of actually depends on the state that you're in because different states have different standardized tests that you have to do. But I, the biggest test that anyone who wants to go to university has to do is the SAT. Okay. So, it's a standard test that everyone around the country takes. You have to like pay for it. A lot of people pay, it's big business actually. People pay for tutoring for it. Oh, so it's not free? No, no, no. Oh, okay. Yeah, you have to pay every time you take it. Oh, wow. Yeah. And you have to pay for the materials to study for it. And it's like a huge part of your college admission. It's the SAT. is it one exam or is it lots of different exams it's one exam that has when i did it it was three different parts but then i think they might have changed it more recently okay and there's also this thing called advanced placement classes where you basically they're harder than the normal class So if you take AP Calculus, it's harder than the usual math that you would take that year. Okay. And for every AP class, you have to take the AP test at the end of the year and you get a grade on that. And that basically is supposed to show how good your AP is. you were at that subject oh wow yeah okay did you do any yeah yeah I had to do I did a few um and they all go in your college application so it's just everything's about your college application yeah yeah absolutely yeah um so in Britain we have the main ones are GCSEs and then A-levels so GCSEs when you're 16 and then A-levels when you're 18 we also have the 11 plus which takes you from primary school to secondary school so it determines uh which which one you're going to go to but it depends on the area that you live in in there's different types of schools that we have but um yeah okay cool your a levels are not you only do those if you go to college right uh yeah so a levels get you into university yeah okay so you have to do a levels to go to university okay um so gcse's you can there's a sort of broader selection you can do i think up to nine ten i think depends on on the individual and then a levels i did three levels but i think now there are more i think you can take five again i've got got a video that goes into this in more depth so we'll check that out um but yeah you take um you kind of as as you go get older and older you kind of get more specific right which i'm sure is the same in the states where you kind of start from nine down to four and then obviously at university you do one main subject so what age can you leave school uh you have to go up to 18 well 17 18 you have to complete 12th grade you technically can drop out um but you really like want to keep going you kids your prospects of jobs are really hard if you haven't graduated high school yeah yeah yeah so in Britain it used to be that you could leave at 16 and just do whatever you want now if you leave at 16 you have to either do a do some kind of part-time work and some education alongside or you have to do some like vocational training um and then until you're 18 and then you can do whatever you want or a lot of people stay till they're 18 they do their A levels and then they leave at 18 to do whatever they want so so yeah so you you have that choice and there is that moment when you're when you hit 16 when you're like oh my goodness like I could leave school it's a really exciting moment and you know generally a lot of people continue but okay and that's when you would go on to college the UK college not US aha UK college yeah so exactly so when you're 16 and you want to continue education you go to either um yeah sixth form college um which could be in the school or it could be a separate um entity so I left my school my secondary school and I went to a separate college yeah but it's still for yeah 16 to 18 year olds different from the American College let's get on to the American College so in Britain we have University and in the States you have colleges so what's the college system like yeah so it's really competitive and it's very I think an interesting thing is that people's identities are very much tied up or generally speaking can very much be tied up into which university you go to so there's a lot of things like like my parents went to this school and that's where I want to go because I want to continue my um my I think the phrase is alma mater um so and yeah so because of that it's very competitive it's also really expensive like really really expensive yeah yeah yeah you hear about parents saving up for years they've got like a college fund for their kids so that they can go on to college so why is college so expensive is it because it's it's a business is that yeah I think so There's a lot of universities and colleges that are not run by the state, by the government, but there's also a lot that are, and those ones are generally cheaper, especially if you're from that state. If I had gone to school at one of the state schools in New York, it would have been a lot cheaper than the one that I ended up going to, but I had a great experience. I think the demand is there. Also, I've never been to a university. here but I think they're just they're huge campuses that it's a lot of where they do a lot of research for the US okay so that's part of it you also get a lot of like amenities like your housing gym they feed you like depending on school very good food maybe not good and there's a lot of different programs and things it's actually like quite a lot of opportunity but it makes it very expensive okay speaking of housing sorority houses and What's the male one? Fraternity. Fraternity houses. Explain just quickly that system to us. Yeah. Because that's very alien. Oh, yeah. So sororities and fraternities are basically what's called Greek life. And you, there's a, I never did like a traditional one. So I don't know the full story of how it all really goes down. But sororities are for women and fraternities are for men. And it's supposed to be that it's like these people become like your social circle. Right. Some people would say that you kind of like pay for friends. It depends on who you ask. It can be very divisive. People who are in Greek life are very about Greek life. And then people who aren't can be very like, what's the point? So, yeah, it's quite interesting. And then sometimes you'll end up living in the dedicated house for that sorority or fraternity. And then sometimes you don't. It just depends. Okay. My only reference is Animal House. The film Animal House, which is a very exaggerated version. version but it seems to me that very they're very tight-knit right you can yeah find a sort of a family as it were yeah very very easily um another term i've heard is ivy league schools what's an ivy league school yeah so it's basically the simple answer of it is it's a group of schools in the u.s that are considered like the most elite schools um the hardest to get into i think there's some kind of classification that makes them ivy league i'm not sure exactly but it's been around for a very very long time So there is a status thing to say that you go to an Ivy League school or that your kid goes there because it means that They're quite they're smart enough to get into it Which is hard and it also means that you have a lot of money to pay for it. Right? Right? in Britain we have We have something called red brick universities, which it's it's a group of universities that are considered to be high achieving so They're things like Manchester I think and Leeds needs are are considered to be these kind of revered schools or revered universities so yeah kind of that same kind of thing if someone goes through a red brick it's like oh okay are they more expensive though? no I don't think so so fees here so when I studied it was a thousand pounds a year to to study which was seen at the time to be like you know really controversial because when my sister went it was free um and then you know in the sort of like 2000s they made them you had to pay at least a thousand pounds but But now they are obviously way more expensive. I don't know the exact cost, but several thousand pounds a year. But I know compared to the States. Oh, yeah. A thousand pounds doesn't even cover the books for the year. Right, right, right. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we're very fortunate here. Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, these days is a lot more expensive. And so that makes people question when they want to take that step to go to university. Well, and I would also say that, so it's very, very. very expensive in the U.S. and this is a very general statement but if we're comparing like especially if we're comparing salaries in London versus salaries in New York for people who are university educated salaries and again depending on what you're going into and what school you went to and everything but salaries in New York are much higher than they are here right so I can imagine people already questioning the value of that over in the U.S. so I imagine here especially when you come into London as a 22 year old and you're trying to get a job and it's like 23 grand a year and you're like how am i gonna i can't even afford to pay off my loans with that and to live here and so i totally get that absolutely student debt here is yeah it's a huge thing a big problem um yeah and obviously if you're doing like a longer course um in in scotland they're four-year courses um or if you're doing that medicine something like that um architecture you'll be studying for many many years so yeah it can be yeah really yeah really difficult for people um let's change the tax slightly and talk about a slightly more fun thing spring break so this when I think about American colleges I usually think about spring break yeah explain to me what is what is it I'll explain to us what is it yeah why is it such a big thing okay so spring break I mean in its simplest term is just um in the spring semester it's when you have a week off uh which is I don't actually think it aligns it doesn't align with Easter um but you just it's just like breaks up all the classes break up for a week so um What people do with that varies significantly, but it's quite common for people to either do alternative spring break, which is when you sign up to do a volunteer program somewhere in the world. So I did those for a couple of years. But it's also common for people to go to Mexico, especially because in the U.S. you obviously can't drink legally until you're 21. So college students love to go to Mexico, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, all those places. And... go and party for a week and stay in like a cheap hotel and just get really drunk all the time like crazy and there's like no rules there so but you did the volunteering you didn't well the last year i did my senior year i did the the a little bit more fun one but yeah it was uh it wasn't quite as crazy as like if you saw like 21 22 jump street when they that one is just like a lot of them are just mad oh yes very traumatized in the films yeah yeah so So, but why is it that week in spring? Why is it not in the summertime or like Christmas time or? Because it's just because every single university has this one week break. And I think in the fall, there's a one week break usually around Thanksgiving. So, and then, but it's Thanksgiving. Whereas the spring break one doesn't coincide with any holidays. So nobody really needs to go home to see family. Okay. So they just hit the beach. Aha. Okay. We don't have an equivalent here. We don't. don't really have that same kind of thing but maybe when you when you leave school you definitely go on like a trip with your friends a latin holiday a latin holiday yeah to spain or greece or something like that um which sounds equally classy as your phone um but yeah yeah interesting okay spring break sounds like something that one should experience i think yeah i mean it's definitely depends on the personality i guess like i was glad i did both sides of it i did the couple of years of the volunteering which was amazing i had such a good time doing that and then had a bit of fun the last year. And in college, I know that sports are a huge thing. Scholarships, March Madness, I've heard about this. Why is college sport such a huge thing? Yeah, so it's big business. So we have in the US there's the NFL, which is the Professional American Football League, and then there's American football that's played at the college level. And the last time I heard about it, the college level. actually is a bigger revenue. driver than the professional league um a lot of it is that there's just again like there's this camaraderie and this like connection to the school that you went to like people in the os will talk about what school they went to till the day they die which is a little bit much sometimes but you wear the sweatshirt you have the sticker on the car it's like you just kind of like it's very much a bonding thing like even here in london um i occasionally they host like an alumni event for people who live in london who went to my university and my English friends are like why are you going to that yes but it's fun it's like nice the connection that you guys have to your schools or your colleges is so much stronger than we have like yeah for us it's like I'm a little bit embarrassed about the one I went to like we just it's just like yeah I went there we don't have the shirts but you guys are connected I know an American friend who used to um tutor people who were applying to that college to help them through the the process which I thought was just like wow that's above and beyond yeah it's really cool that you're connected to your yeah your institutions like that it's it is like it does kind of foster community even when you leave and it's actually really good for networking um and again it can be a little elitist uh depending on what school you went to but um so then to go back to sports that's where a lot of that comes from and because this is such a money-making thing um schools will do everything that they can specific especially with american football to just bring in as big of crowds as possible and they give scholarships to the the best high school players so that they'll come to the school and play for them so that their team gets better and better and same for basketball and that's where March Madness comes in that's the biggest tournament for basketball that's a huge thing as well um baseball is really big too but there's this this like big camaraderie around it all and then also it continues outside so like basically the community gets bigger and bigger because people graduate but then new people come in right and they all stick around so yeah yeah yeah very cool when you get your degree Degree, I guess it's called a degree. What are the grading for that? So you have a GPA, basically. Do you guys have that? No. No, okay. So it stands for a grade point average. And this is actually the same in most high schools as well. You get for each course and each semester, you will get a grade, an overall grade for that. And then it starts at like A, B, C, D, and then F is failing. Okay. So A's give you the highest. highest points and then the points are averaged and that's your GPA okay um and as long as you basically I think it's like if you pass then you get a degree there's probably some cut off I might not be I did really well so um I never had to worry about that but um you yeah as then you get your degree the funny thing is though that like no one really talks about GPA after you have the degree so yeah yeah often the way right like yeah especially when you're at school and you get GCSEs and a level and then, yeah, your degree, and you're like, no one cares. Once you're in the world of work, no one really cares. So in Britain we have the class system, so we have a third, which is the lowest you can get, there's a 2-2, a 2-1, and then a first class degree is the top. Wait, but those are different degrees? No, no, no, different, like A, B, C, D. So you're starting at the bottom is the third, well, maybe you don't even get a degree, then there's third and it goes up, 2-2, 2-1, and then a first. I never understood that. Yeah. nor do I and I let you guys decide which I got because it wasn't the first. Thank you so much Jess for joining us I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. If you guys have any questions or anything to add to what we've talked about please let us know in the comments below but until next time take it easy. Bye! Bye!

Easy Dreamers welcome back to another video with me Teacher Tom and Jess from Love and London. Hello. Welcome back.

Thank you. Good to have you here. Today we're comparing the British education system with the American education system because a lot of you guys have asked me, you're very interested, so I thought we'd compare and contrast. We're not experts necessarily but we have been through the education systems. Yes, some would say.

Yeah, so yeah we'll try our best to give you as much information as we can. So first of all my question to you is what age do you start school in America? So everybody starts at five and that's kindergarten. That's the first official grade. but also most kids will be put into preschool which is when you're three and four but that's usually not public that's usually paid for by your parents okay cool yeah and we start yeah between four and five here and we have you in nursery beforehand oh so when I was in school um elementary started around nine and then middle school and high school and we'll get into that in a bit started earlier and earlier so high school um there was one year where I had to be at school for 7 30 and my bus came at 6 30 so it was like really early but i think they're changing that now and they're kind of trying to adjust that because it's quite early yeah you just mentioned school buses there that's something that is in my mind when i think about american schools is that big yellow school bus is that a thing yeah yeah oh yeah did you take that yeah yeah yeah basically i have dreams about them still which is really weird that i keep missing them and but yeah that's like all through school until you're like allowed to drive to school if you're allowed to drive to school then you take them okay cool yeah i don't we have school buses here but only in more rural areas mostly you just kind of walk to school or if you're in london take a bus um what different types of schools do you have so you mentioned was it elementary school yep so elementary is where you start and you do that for kindergarten to fifth grade where you're up till 10 and then most places will have a middle school which is 11 to 13 years old and then you'll do high school which is 14 to 8 17 Okay and then you move on to college after that.

Yeah, exactly. But university, yeah. Yeah, we'll go into that. Yeah.

Here in Britain we have primary school and then secondary school. That's pretty much it. Yeah, the only two. I'd like to know about free versus sort of paid education systems. What are the names for those there?

Yeah, so if you go to the school that you... the free school, it's called public school. So that's what I did.

I went to public school and then then if you your parents are paying for it for you it's private school okay aha now that's so confusing for us because we have our free schools are state schools we also have free schools but there's something else that yeah we'll go to another time but then our paid schools are private schools but then we also have public schools which are not free they're quite the opposite they're the most expensive schools so we have things like Eton and Harrow I think Prince William and Prince Harry Went to Eton, which is a public school. So it sounds like it should be free, but it's the opposite. It confuses me every time I hear it, because I don't understand why you would call it public when it is completely the opposite of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. So at school, do you have to wear uniforms?

Is that a thing in the States? Mostly if you go to public school. So free school, you don't. I never wore uniforms when I went to school.

If you go to a private school, generally they do, because a lot of private schools are Catholic schools, or based on some kind of... kind of religion but yeah when I was growing up all the private schools around me they all wore uniforms. Okay in a lot of the American TV shows I've seen there are kind of like groups of people and you've got like the geeks and the jocks. Oh the jocks! Yeah what can you explain to us like what what the group because I was thinking about like there are sort of unwritten rules for uniforms right like if you're a jock if you're a goth if you're you know something else a geek you have to wear certain types of clothes But is that a thing in the States where you have like these groups of kids?

Yeah, it is. It's not like how it is in the films It's definitely I would well at least where I went to school. I felt like that was quite over dramatized But sports is a really really big thing in most especially public schools especially for boys in public schools they So and then there's a lot of like camaraderie around the American football team some of the other teams especially if they're really good so I would say like the sports the jocks are which no one actually calls them the jocks when you're in school um but this people who play sports very much stuck together and then just like anywhere in life really it just everyone kind of comes together by their common interests so okay all right so yeah so it's not as exaggerated as you know um some of those shows no I mean not where I went to school So it could be different other places, but and some schools have more of a lean towards Especially around like LA they have more of a lean towards the dramatic arts So that's a much bigger group than the people who do sports.

So it just depends. Okay, but high school sport is a big thing Yes, yeah, really big thing. There's even a TV show on Netflix, but it's all about like the American football teams of high schools and they kind of follow the trials and tribulations of each team. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

So yeah, it sounds like it's like a big thing. There's like bands. and cheerleaders and yeah yeah yeah i mean and they usually american football is the biggest team it depends on the school because some schools have better soccer teams it feels weird for me even to say soccer um or some of them have better baseball teams but usually there's the biggest camaraderie around american football and like we do things called a pep rally where it kind of like opens the season and it gets everyone excited and like you said there's cheerleaders i did dance team and we did performances at the football games also basketball games and that's where like they have the biggest bleachers usually for people to sit and watch and it's a whole thing right right it's funny actually even comparing the sports like you're talking about American football basketball baseball these are the big sports right whereas in British schools we're talking about football or soccer as you said rugby cricket basketball to an extent maybe netball things like that so different sports as well and going back a little bit to the grades or years so you you call them grades right so yes when you enter school what's how does it work yeah so kindergarten is the first one like we've spoke about before and that's when you're five and then the next one when you're six is first grade and then it just keeps going up to 12th grade okay and then when you get to high school that um the freshman sophomore junior senior thing kicks in so freshman is when you're 14 that's ninth grade 10th grade sophomore 11th junior and senior is 12th grade.

That's in high school? Yeah. Oh, okay.

So you have that in high school and in college as well. Exactly. Oh, interesting.

Okay. So in Britain we have reception is the first year that's four to five and then it's class one, two, three or year one, two, three continuing, um, through to 12. Okay. I think, yeah, I'll double check that, but yes, I think so. Uh, what exams do you guys have? So we, it kind of actually depends on the state that you're in because different states have different standardized tests that you have to do.

But I, the biggest test that anyone who wants to go to university has to do is the SAT. Okay. So, it's a standard test that everyone around the country takes. You have to like pay for it.

A lot of people pay, it's big business actually. People pay for tutoring for it. Oh, so it's not free? No, no, no. Oh, okay.

Yeah, you have to pay every time you take it. Oh, wow. Yeah. And you have to pay for the materials to study for it.

And it's like a huge part of your college admission. It's the SAT. is it one exam or is it lots of different exams it's one exam that has when i did it it was three different parts but then i think they might have changed it more recently okay and there's also this thing called advanced placement classes where you basically they're harder than the normal class So if you take AP Calculus, it's harder than the usual math that you would take that year. Okay. And for every AP class, you have to take the AP test at the end of the year and you get a grade on that.

And that basically is supposed to show how good your AP is. you were at that subject oh wow yeah okay did you do any yeah yeah I had to do I did a few um and they all go in your college application so it's just everything's about your college application yeah yeah absolutely yeah um so in Britain we have the main ones are GCSEs and then A-levels so GCSEs when you're 16 and then A-levels when you're 18 we also have the 11 plus which takes you from primary school to secondary school so it determines uh which which one you're going to go to but it depends on the area that you live in in there's different types of schools that we have but um yeah okay cool your a levels are not you only do those if you go to college right uh yeah so a levels get you into university yeah okay so you have to do a levels to go to university okay um so gcse's you can there's a sort of broader selection you can do i think up to nine ten i think depends on on the individual and then a levels i did three levels but i think now there are more i think you can take five again i've got got a video that goes into this in more depth so we'll check that out um but yeah you take um you kind of as as you go get older and older you kind of get more specific right which i'm sure is the same in the states where you kind of start from nine down to four and then obviously at university you do one main subject so what age can you leave school uh you have to go up to 18 well 17 18 you have to complete 12th grade you technically can drop out um but you really like want to keep going you kids your prospects of jobs are really hard if you haven't graduated high school yeah yeah yeah so in Britain it used to be that you could leave at 16 and just do whatever you want now if you leave at 16 you have to either do a do some kind of part-time work and some education alongside or you have to do some like vocational training um and then until you're 18 and then you can do whatever you want or a lot of people stay till they're 18 they do their A levels and then they leave at 18 to do whatever they want so so yeah so you you have that choice and there is that moment when you're when you hit 16 when you're like oh my goodness like I could leave school it's a really exciting moment and you know generally a lot of people continue but okay and that's when you would go on to college the UK college not US aha UK college yeah so exactly so when you're 16 and you want to continue education you go to either um yeah sixth form college um which could be in the school or it could be a separate um entity so I left my school my secondary school and I went to a separate college yeah but it's still for yeah 16 to 18 year olds different from the American College let's get on to the American College so in Britain we have University and in the States you have colleges so what's the college system like yeah so it's really competitive and it's very I think an interesting thing is that people's identities are very much tied up or generally speaking can very much be tied up into which university you go to so there's a lot of things like like my parents went to this school and that's where I want to go because I want to continue my um my I think the phrase is alma mater um so and yeah so because of that it's very competitive it's also really expensive like really really expensive yeah yeah yeah you hear about parents saving up for years they've got like a college fund for their kids so that they can go on to college so why is college so expensive is it because it's it's a business is that yeah I think so There's a lot of universities and colleges that are not run by the state, by the government, but there's also a lot that are, and those ones are generally cheaper, especially if you're from that state. If I had gone to school at one of the state schools in New York, it would have been a lot cheaper than the one that I ended up going to, but I had a great experience. I think the demand is there. Also, I've never been to a university. here but I think they're just they're huge campuses that it's a lot of where they do a lot of research for the US okay so that's part of it you also get a lot of like amenities like your housing gym they feed you like depending on school very good food maybe not good and there's a lot of different programs and things it's actually like quite a lot of opportunity but it makes it very expensive okay speaking of housing sorority houses and What's the male one?

Fraternity. Fraternity houses. Explain just quickly that system to us.

Yeah. Because that's very alien. Oh, yeah. So sororities and fraternities are basically what's called Greek life.

And you, there's a, I never did like a traditional one. So I don't know the full story of how it all really goes down. But sororities are for women and fraternities are for men. And it's supposed to be that it's like these people become like your social circle.

Right. Some people would say that you kind of like pay for friends. It depends on who you ask. It can be very divisive. People who are in Greek life are very about Greek life.

And then people who aren't can be very like, what's the point? So, yeah, it's quite interesting. And then sometimes you'll end up living in the dedicated house for that sorority or fraternity. And then sometimes you don't. It just depends.

Okay. My only reference is Animal House. The film Animal House, which is a very exaggerated version. version but it seems to me that very they're very tight-knit right you can yeah find a sort of a family as it were yeah very very easily um another term i've heard is ivy league schools what's an ivy league school yeah so it's basically the simple answer of it is it's a group of schools in the u.s that are considered like the most elite schools um the hardest to get into i think there's some kind of classification that makes them ivy league i'm not sure exactly but it's been around for a very very long time So there is a status thing to say that you go to an Ivy League school or that your kid goes there because it means that They're quite they're smart enough to get into it Which is hard and it also means that you have a lot of money to pay for it. Right?

Right? in Britain we have We have something called red brick universities, which it's it's a group of universities that are considered to be high achieving so They're things like Manchester I think and Leeds needs are are considered to be these kind of revered schools or revered universities so yeah kind of that same kind of thing if someone goes through a red brick it's like oh okay are they more expensive though? no I don't think so so fees here so when I studied it was a thousand pounds a year to to study which was seen at the time to be like you know really controversial because when my sister went it was free um and then you know in the sort of like 2000s they made them you had to pay at least a thousand pounds but But now they are obviously way more expensive. I don't know the exact cost, but several thousand pounds a year.

But I know compared to the States. Oh, yeah. A thousand pounds doesn't even cover the books for the year. Right, right, right.

Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we're very fortunate here.

Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, these days is a lot more expensive. And so that makes people question when they want to take that step to go to university.

Well, and I would also say that, so it's very, very. very expensive in the U.S. and this is a very general statement but if we're comparing like especially if we're comparing salaries in London versus salaries in New York for people who are university educated salaries and again depending on what you're going into and what school you went to and everything but salaries in New York are much higher than they are here right so I can imagine people already questioning the value of that over in the U.S. so I imagine here especially when you come into London as a 22 year old and you're trying to get a job and it's like 23 grand a year and you're like how am i gonna i can't even afford to pay off my loans with that and to live here and so i totally get that absolutely student debt here is yeah it's a huge thing a big problem um yeah and obviously if you're doing like a longer course um in in scotland they're four-year courses um or if you're doing that medicine something like that um architecture you'll be studying for many many years so yeah it can be yeah really yeah really difficult for people um let's change the tax slightly and talk about a slightly more fun thing spring break so this when I think about American colleges I usually think about spring break yeah explain to me what is what is it I'll explain to us what is it yeah why is it such a big thing okay so spring break I mean in its simplest term is just um in the spring semester it's when you have a week off uh which is I don't actually think it aligns it doesn't align with Easter um but you just it's just like breaks up all the classes break up for a week so um What people do with that varies significantly, but it's quite common for people to either do alternative spring break, which is when you sign up to do a volunteer program somewhere in the world. So I did those for a couple of years.

But it's also common for people to go to Mexico, especially because in the U.S. you obviously can't drink legally until you're 21. So college students love to go to Mexico, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, all those places. And... go and party for a week and stay in like a cheap hotel and just get really drunk all the time like crazy and there's like no rules there so but you did the volunteering you didn't well the last year i did my senior year i did the the a little bit more fun one but yeah it was uh it wasn't quite as crazy as like if you saw like 21 22 jump street when they that one is just like a lot of them are just mad oh yes very traumatized in the films yeah yeah so So, but why is it that week in spring?

Why is it not in the summertime or like Christmas time or? Because it's just because every single university has this one week break. And I think in the fall, there's a one week break usually around Thanksgiving.

So, and then, but it's Thanksgiving. Whereas the spring break one doesn't coincide with any holidays. So nobody really needs to go home to see family. Okay. So they just hit the beach.

Aha. Okay. We don't have an equivalent here. We don't. don't really have that same kind of thing but maybe when you when you leave school you definitely go on like a trip with your friends a latin holiday a latin holiday yeah to spain or greece or something like that um which sounds equally classy as your phone um but yeah yeah interesting okay spring break sounds like something that one should experience i think yeah i mean it's definitely depends on the personality i guess like i was glad i did both sides of it i did the couple of years of the volunteering which was amazing i had such a good time doing that and then had a bit of fun the last year.

And in college, I know that sports are a huge thing. Scholarships, March Madness, I've heard about this. Why is college sport such a huge thing? Yeah, so it's big business. So we have in the US there's the NFL, which is the Professional American Football League, and then there's American football that's played at the college level.

And the last time I heard about it, the college level. actually is a bigger revenue. driver than the professional league um a lot of it is that there's just again like there's this camaraderie and this like connection to the school that you went to like people in the os will talk about what school they went to till the day they die which is a little bit much sometimes but you wear the sweatshirt you have the sticker on the car it's like you just kind of like it's very much a bonding thing like even here in london um i occasionally they host like an alumni event for people who live in london who went to my university and my English friends are like why are you going to that yes but it's fun it's like nice the connection that you guys have to your schools or your colleges is so much stronger than we have like yeah for us it's like I'm a little bit embarrassed about the one I went to like we just it's just like yeah I went there we don't have the shirts but you guys are connected I know an American friend who used to um tutor people who were applying to that college to help them through the the process which I thought was just like wow that's above and beyond yeah it's really cool that you're connected to your yeah your institutions like that it's it is like it does kind of foster community even when you leave and it's actually really good for networking um and again it can be a little elitist uh depending on what school you went to but um so then to go back to sports that's where a lot of that comes from and because this is such a money-making thing um schools will do everything that they can specific especially with american football to just bring in as big of crowds as possible and they give scholarships to the the best high school players so that they'll come to the school and play for them so that their team gets better and better and same for basketball and that's where March Madness comes in that's the biggest tournament for basketball that's a huge thing as well um baseball is really big too but there's this this like big camaraderie around it all and then also it continues outside so like basically the community gets bigger and bigger because people graduate but then new people come in right and they all stick around so yeah yeah yeah very cool when you get your degree Degree, I guess it's called a degree. What are the grading for that? So you have a GPA, basically.

Do you guys have that? No. No, okay. So it stands for a grade point average.

And this is actually the same in most high schools as well. You get for each course and each semester, you will get a grade, an overall grade for that. And then it starts at like A, B, C, D, and then F is failing. Okay.

So A's give you the highest. highest points and then the points are averaged and that's your GPA okay um and as long as you basically I think it's like if you pass then you get a degree there's probably some cut off I might not be I did really well so um I never had to worry about that but um you yeah as then you get your degree the funny thing is though that like no one really talks about GPA after you have the degree so yeah yeah often the way right like yeah especially when you're at school and you get GCSEs and a level and then, yeah, your degree, and you're like, no one cares. Once you're in the world of work, no one really cares. So in Britain we have the class system, so we have a third, which is the lowest you can get, there's a 2-2, a 2-1, and then a first class degree is the top. Wait, but those are different degrees?

No, no, no, different, like A, B, C, D. So you're starting at the bottom is the third, well, maybe you don't even get a degree, then there's third and it goes up, 2-2, 2-1, and then a first. I never understood that. Yeah. nor do I and I let you guys decide which I got because it wasn't the first. Thank you so much Jess for joining us I really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. If you guys have any questions or anything to add to what we've talked about please let us know in the comments below but until next time take it easy. Bye! Bye!

Transcript for:Comparing British and American Education Systems

Transcript for:
Comparing British and American Education Systems