How does the Sixth work?

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

This has been puzzling me (ignorant young colonial with no clue about how the British school system works that I am).

In Autumn Term, Karen is in the Sixth. Rowan is Upper Fifth, as is Lois Sanger. Jan Scott is in the Sixth also. In End of Term / Cricket Term, Lois is Games Captain, which presumably means she is in the Sixth; and she leaves at the end of Cricket Term, as does Jan Scott.

However, Rowan says that Jan Scott was always a year ahead of her.

So is this just an inconsistency? Or is the Sixth actually two years long and members of the Sixth can leave at the end of either year? Or what?

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Upper and Lower Sixth. This was fairly usual: the 2 year stretch to - in my day - A-levels.

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

So what happened if you left after the first year of sixth - did that mean you left with O levels but no A levels? If so, what was the point of doing that extra year?

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

O-Levels (now GCSEs) are taken at the end of Fifth year. A-Levels are a two year course. When I took mine (1997) a few people left having at the end of the Lower Sixth, having decided that they wanted to do something different or start work. They didn't have an extra qualification, but the extra year of study did help then get a place.

Nowadays (I think) several AS levels (half A-levels) are taken at the end of L6 and three or four are taken as full A levels at the end of the Upper Sixth. Presumably this would mean that someone could leave at the end of L6 with AS levels, which would be a recognised qualification.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

You might be filling in with extra O levels, or Cookery or General Studies, especially if you had a place at a finishing school or secretarial school, but couldn't take it up until you were 18. You might even be taking A levels a year early, and then taking a year off before University.

[liadnan]

The year-system Forest is using was pretty much gone in all but the poshest of schools by my day. I may be wrong, but my understanding is it worked like this:
# First Form, age 9 to 10)
# Second Form, age 10 to 11
# Third Form, age 11 to 12
# Lower Fourth, age 12 to 13
# Upper Fourth, age 13 to 14
# Lower Fifth, age 14 to 15
# Upper Fifth, age 15 to 16
# Lower Sixth, age 16 to 17
# Upper Sixth, age 17 to 18

(roughly)

Most schools, private or state had by the 80s gone over to:
# Ist year, age 11 to 12
# 2nd year, age 12 to 13
# 3rd year, age 13 to 14
# 4th year, age 14 to 15
# 5th year, age 15 to 16
# Lower Sixth, age 16 to 17
# Upper Sixth, age 17 to 18

Note there is a complicated thing going on here to do with the fact state and most independent schools started at 11 -and some still did the 11+ to split them by ability- whereas public schools did (and do: it's alive and well) Common Entrance at 12-13 (so you would have an intake into the Lower Fourth -mind you, at Kingscote the Junior Side-Senior Side split is between the second and the third, which seems odd to me. "Public" of course here means the posher echelon of private education, but not all private schools are Public or do common entrance... Notably Forest went to a day grammar which would I think have started at 11, whereas Kingscote is a public school with a Junior Side going down to 9. To confuse matters further some schools could be flexible in promoting or holding back people at least a year.

State and most independent schools now use a numbering system running from "reception" and then "year 1" (5-6) to "year 13". This is comparatively recent and those of us with friends who are teachers still regularly find ourselves confused and counting on our fingers when they start banging on about what their Year 10s were up to.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Someone told me years ago that if an American told you what grade their child was in, add six and you've got the age, more or less. I've been using this for 'year 10' or whatever and it seems not to cause much cognitive dissonance.

Mind you, I went to school in Hampshire in the 70s and 80s during which there was a numbering system that went

year 9, age 8-9
year 10, age 9-10

and so forth up to Upper and Lower Sixth, which worked the old way; which means that people mentioning pregnant year 10s still make me instinctively boggle more than I otherwise would have done.

I'm completely confused about form ages in Forest - I thought there was an Upper and Lower Sixth, but then Ann becomes a prefect in Upper Fifth.

I did wonder whether Jan could have been a year ahead for part of her schooling, which might have contributed to her self-sufficiency, but I don't think the dates fit.

[liadnan]

In my school upper and lower sixth were socially one, and there were prefects in both.
I think the oddity at Kingscote is that yes, they have prefects in Upper Fifth (ie Fifth Year, in my head). Anyone know if this happened?

I was at school in Hants in the 80s too (First Year of a private grammar school in 1984 aged 11 but we had a junior side going down to 4 anyway, except, to complicate things, I spent time being a cathedral chorister which entailed going to a Prep School). To make matters worse, I think at that time there was a hangover from what had once been Southampton LEA, distinct from Hants, which for reasons known only to itself changed at 12. Didn't come across the system you refer to: I can see how that would make one worry about Year 10s...

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I got caught in the changing-at-12 thing!

In retrospect, it was a good thing as it meant I only spent four years at a comprehensive that I still have Ginty-like fantasies of denouncing if I ever become famous (it went five-year when I was fourteen or fifteen, and still is, as far as I know) but it did mean a year of my parents and various other relatives complaining that eleven-year-olds were 'marking time' and 'not being stretched'.

I'm now trying to remember whether they had prefects from Upper Fifth at the Chalet, not that you can call that a real-life example.

[liadnan]

I suppose it may have been created because of the arguments that 11 was too early to stream people. Now I'm wondering which comp that was...

Thinking a bit more about the sixth: historically it's a bit detached from the rest of the school: the point of being in the Sixth in the era before.. say the 70s? was (mainly) that you were preparing for matriculation, and you stayed there as long as it took (which became established as being two years). So it'll often be referred to as just "the sixth", no?

(I'm also thinking back to the stories from the much earlier era when all this really evolved -trying to remember how they do it in Kipling. Or Dornford Yates reminiscences of his school days. Or Tom Brown come to that)

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Hounsdown School (http://www.hounsdown.hants.sch.uk/), Jacobs Gutter Lane, Totton, Hants. Apparently it's now become a 'science college' and they've changed their logo to a strangely distorted triquetra.

I've just had a fit of appalment at realising that apart from apparently not expecting girls to wear ties any more, the uniform hasn't changed a bit, with particular reference to the godawful gold Aertex PE shirts. Oh my. I wonder whether the likes of Margaret Hopkins ever felt that way in later life on catching sight of the Kingscote equivalent?

[liadnan]

Ah, t'other side of Soton from the places I know.

I saw some kids in our brown and "gold" (yellow) when I was visiting my mother a while ago and had a similar fit of appallment.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

Well, I was at school in the 1960s, and I can assure you that we did A levels then.... I forget when they came in, I think it may even have been in the late 1940s, very early 1950s.

The school I was at had forms (not classes!) called:
Lower IV (age 11+)
Upper IV
Lower V
Middle V
Upper V (O level year)
Lower VI
Upper VI (A Levels)

VI form stopped being required to wear uniforms in about 1966, but there was such a strict dress code we might as well not have bothered - always skirts and jerseys; my year were allowed to wear trousers, but they had to be part of a trouser suit, not jeans or even cords. When I was Lower VI, we did a lot of our "General" work (i.e. for the exam known as the General Paper, which was essay-writing, as well as some non-exam stuff) with the then Upper VI, but when we were Upper VI, the Lower VI was too large, so we worked separately.

Until our year, the Lower VI had been divided into 2 streams - Lower VI A, who mainly went on to do A levels, and Lower VI G, or General, who didn't, and normally left after a year. I think those people wanted to resit some or all of their O levels, or just experience some more general work. They were not expecting to go to university (not everybody did, back then), but nor, by 1969, were they expecting to go to a finishing school, either.... many would go and do a secretarial training, or something, but didn't really expect to work for long! My own year wasn't streamed, but some girls just did the general course and left at the end of a year, nevertheless.

My daughter's school, in the 1990s, had a very similar sort of numbering system, but they started in Upper III, not Lower IV, so didn't have a "Middle" anything; another school we looked at for her started at Lower IV, but then had a "Middle IV", and the GCSE course started in Lower V, which makes rather more sense! The Upper IIIs were, nevertheless, referred to as "little first-years", and my daughter and her friends was well aware which school year she was in, whatever it was called!

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

The school I went to had turned into a state school about six or seven years before I went there, but still had some traditional holdovers from when it was private - including prefects from both Sixth and Fifth. The bulk of the prefects were Sixth, and you had to be a prefect in Sixth Year to be appointed Head Girl or Head Boy (when my school was private, it was all-girls: it went mixed when it turned comprehensive, and there wasn't a Head Boy until the first mixed year reached Sixth - and I know this, because the names of past Head Girls were inscribed in gold paint on a board in the hall, and the year before I started was the first year with a double set of names). Some Fifth Years weren't sixteen yet when the year started, but if you were a responsible type and over 16 you might be a prefect in Fifth Year, so it didn't surprise me that Ann was.

[coughingbear]

...Ann becomes a prefect in Upper Fifth.

Which is additionally confusing, because hasn't she taken her O-levels by this point, so shouldn't she be in the Lower Sixth?

The Sixth, while covering two years at Kingscote, definitely seem to operate in some ways as a single group - they have a shared form-room, I think, recalling the time Nick & Lawrie go to collect chairs from them at the end of term. That would work, I suppose, because they're going to split into small groups for teaching as they will all be doing different combinations of subjects.

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

I thought Ann was in the Lower Sixth when she was made a prefect, Nicola says at the beginning of Attic Term that Ann got her O levels, and I seem to remember a reference to her being in Upper VA in The Cricket Term (in the context of Upper VA playing to lose)?

[coughingbear]

Yes, you're quite right - Attic Term is when Ann gets made a prefect and Miranda says 'I suppose she's got a proper dormitory now she's in the Sixth', and of course she has.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Drat, true. My mistake.

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

*icon love*

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

As soon as I saw the base over on obsessiveicons I knew I had to do it. :)

[clotilde.livejournal.com]

I had a bit of a look around on google, and I found a couple of public schools which still used a year grouping system which was the same as the one you mentioned above (3rd form = modern year 7 = age 11-12).

[liadnan]

Interesting. Looks like it does survive in public schools more than I thought:
http://www.downside.co.uk/senior/academic.html

Eton does its own thing, as ever:
http://www.etoncollege.com/default.asp

Harrow doesn't appear to have changed anything in the last hundred years either and still has The Shell.
http://www.harrowschool.org.uk/html/academic/subjects/

Roedean, which as a girl's public school is possibly more relevant does still do pretty much what we see at Kingscote:
http://www.roedean.co.uk/Default.asp?First=12&Second=14
Foundation Years see to correspond to Third (11) and Lower Fourth (12) as Middle School starts with Upper IV.

[liadnan]

"Sixth Form girls are clearly identifiable around the school; they do not have to wear school uniform. They are the seniors of the school and they enjoy the respect that this brings from both staff and from the younger girls."

I bet they bloody do.

[gillo]

I know several girls' day schools still using the traditional system: Usually the first year of Senior School is either Third Form or Upper Third, then the years go in pairs thereafter. Thus Upper and Lower Sixth is merely a continuation of teh pattern.

In the days that the earlier novels are set it was far from unusual for a girl, particularly, to leave school after only a year of Sixth Form, for secretarial college, finishing school or even, in the 50s, to "come out". Lots of girls also left after O Levels, which is why Sixth Forms were often treated administratively as a single unit. In the grammar school I took A Levels in, for instance, as late as 1973, a year-group of about a hundred shrank to about eighty in the Fifth Form (as 20-odd left school at 15, still allowed then) and then again after O Levels. There were only 48 in my entire year in the Sixth Form, and one or two of them left after a year.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I think it's an inconsistency. I mean, if Lois is in the same year as Rowan then she should be in the year below Jan, but they leave at the same time. Technically Lois may have left at the end of the lower sixth, but that makes no sense, and she's going on to the training school (Bedford? is that right), which would seem to suggest that she'd taken her A levels, and was leaving from upper sixth.

The sixth form is two years long, but almost no-one leaves at the end of the first year unless they're dropping out. (That's changed somewhat now, but at the time of Lois et al, it would be sufficiently unusual for it to need some mention of a reason in the book.)

[liadnan]

I think there is an inconsistency, but I'm not sure this is it. Lois is going on elsewhere, but she's decided not to do something that's going to entail matriculation, so there's no longer any point in her sticking on and she can leave at the end of lower sixth and get on with going to what, these days, would probably be a CFHE. I think Lois does leave at ~17, only one year after her O Levels. The inconsistency, I think, is Ann.

I think that (particularly in Forrest's mind) there was still an element of examination and qualification not being the primary purpose of education. And I'm not sure leaving partway through the sixth would have been so remarkable in that kind of school then.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

It doesn't work because in The Cricket Term Ginty and Monica get their chance on the swimming team because, inter alia, Lois can't make it, and that's because she's got "exams" as do the other normal first team swimmers (which must be public exams because of the timing in the term - far earlier than school exams could account for (Nicola has a whole three weeks or more following the gala to recover from the stitches). So Lois somehow manages to do a full set of A levels in one year, and unless we argue that 1) she only needs two for Games College; and 2) she formed part of the Tutorial Sixth, took her GCE "O" levels in the November of Autumn Term (which would have been mentioned at the time of the Play, surely?) and rushed on to do the "A" levels in a much shorter time than normal (and if so, Why?) I think it has to be a Flint on AF's part.

[liadnan]

Mmm.
That blows it. (She can't be doing O level resits then either, crashing failure the first time round would not have passed without comment).

While it can't save it, would she need A-levels at all for Games College? I don't really have a clear image of what kind of place this would be.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

I think she would, because she's aiming to teach Games, and my betting is that she'd need the bare minimum matriculation qualification or HND (which I can't see Kingscote offering) if she wanted any form of teaching qualification.

If you consider Leys in Miss Pym Disposes and the equivalent establishment in the Gladys Mitchell book (Laurels Are Poison?) the degree of theoretical work on anatomy etc is pretty formidable.

I'd say she'd need the qualifications one would expect to obtain a place at a Teacher Training College after the War but before the introduction of PGCE, which would be a minimum of two A levels in relevant subjects.

Anyway, she certainly seems to be taking "A" Levels, and she seems to have been in the same class as Rowan, which must by definition have been an A form, so whatever she may therorectically need, she certiainly appears to be aiming for getting A levels.

[liadnan]

We are left with only one answer...

[richenda.livejournal.com]

In the 1950s you needed two A levels for Nonington (sp?) which specialized in training PE teachers. I think, but am not sure, that you needed A levels for all teacher training colleges. Some people took them in Lower Sixth, whereas people who were doing three or more always stayed for the second year - but they might take their best subject in Lower Six, and three more in the second year.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

it has to be a Flint

Lois/Marcus OTP.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I think that (particularly in Forrest's mind) there was still an element of examination and qualification not being the primary purpose of education.
Never such innocence… ::grinds teeth as tries to write course specification::

Antonia, you've let me down!

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

Having written an entire novel independent of yet somewhat channelling A. Forest's work, and having based my school's year system on Kingscote, I realize now that I've been completely mislead! As another ignorant colonial, I did not realize that the Sixth lasted for two years; I was confused by precisely the Ann/Lois issues that you have all pointed to. I had the Sixth being 17/18, and Upper Fifth being 16/17, and so on down the line. I've just sent my ms. to the first possible publisher, fortunately an American one; before it goes out again (assuming that I'll be turned down a lot) I will need to go through the entire text and change the forms. I was kind of aware that I needed an English editor (there are also social class issues that I find tough to handle) but I haven't been able to afford one.

In what year, in the correct system, would one have moved into the Senior School? I had Cassie (my heroine) doing this in the Lower Fourth, but now it turns out that she's in the Upper Fourth in any event so this isn't going to work. My book is set at a very academic girls' day school in London in 1938-39, so I'm working with the old system here.

What a nuisance. I had to change everything about Netball as well. I assume that the titles of the players has just changed since *Autumn Term* was written, because I'd based everything on those names and then one of my London readers, who is on her school's netball team, forced me to change everything to the new system on the grounds that it would be excessively confusing to modern readers to use the names Forest uses. We don't play netball in my country either (and I'd never have played it even if we did) so I had no idea. My descriptions of netball matches are very sketchy...

Re: Antonia, you've let me down!

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

I don't think the issue of Senior School/Junior School need be a problem for you - a private day school (if that's what yours is) could set its own rules. Working backwards from Upper V being the O Level (School Cert.) class, that would be the age 15-16 year; Lower V, age 14-15; Upper IV, age 13-14. That would be a likely age for that sort of school to start its Senior School - certainly, public schools start at 13.

Then Lower IV is ages 12-13; Third is ages 11-12. Checking back to the thread starting on 12/7/05 (American style dating) "How did Mrs. Marlow do it", gives a good timeline for the children's birthdays, provided by JediOwl - this has the twins' 12th birthday coming in July, the year before they start in the third. It may be that they should have been Lower IV, where they would have been among the youngest in the class; but maybe they were put in the Third because they had missed a lot of school due to illness.

As for the Sixth, I would presume that at Kingscote most of the girls don't enter the sixth. Otherwise the cricket competition would be a bit one-sided, and the formroom would be heaving. Maybe they all the B's go off to secretarial college, finishing school, or AF's anticipating herself and they're going to all the boys' public schools that let girls in the 6th form. Anyway, the sixth is 2 years, as Ann certainly has another full year to go after the Attic Term.

As far as I remember, in Autumn Term, Lois says she probably won't be staying after Matric. (she's a Lower Fifth at the time) - but obviously, she does (Cricket Term has Nick saying, "So she hasn't left"). As suggested on that "How did Mrs. Marlow do it" thread, maybe her PT college wouldn't take them before 17, so Lois had to stop on another year or find something else to do. Though I'd have thought she could have stopped for A levels in the circumstances.

Senior school and netball teams

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

Do the netball teams have to follow the division of classes into Junior/Middle and Senior school? That is, could somebody in the Upper Fourth or even Lower Fifth still play on the Junior netball team, if the senior school starts in the Upper Fourth? Since these teams are playing against other schools with different divisions, surely there could be some rule like Junior team goes up to age 14/15, senior is age 15 and up? I need Cassie (Upper IVA) and Isa (my fascist anti-heroine, Lower VB) to be on the Junior team and Ginger (Upper VA) to be the star of the Senior team. Plausible? Thanks for the advice!!

Re: Senior school and netball teams

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

You might get away with seniors u-19, juniors u-15, which would make the cut-off point between Lower V and Upper V. U-19, at least, would be reasonable - it wasn't unusual for girls' schools (in literature at least, I can't speak from experience!) to have girls up to 19, and there may have been college teams to play as well. Alternatively, could Isa be a particularly bright child a year ahead in the school, but still eligible to play for junior teams?

Re: Antonia, you've let me down!

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

The book sounds very intriguing - is it for adults or children?

Re: Antonia, you've let me down!

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

It's a Young Adult book--started out more for the 12-14 set but somehow morphed into a sort of 14-17 level I'd say. Its central plot is that five Jewish girls named Cassandra, from various times in the late 20th and early 21st century, wake up one morning as schoolgirls (also named Cassandra) in London in September 1938. They all know the future (W.W.II, the Holocaust), but because they are just a bunch of children nobody will believe them.

In Part I the main character (Cassie) adjusts to life in her new, large, chaotic 1938 family, sorts out academic and social existence at the London College School for Girls, and meets one other girl there (red-headed Ginger, a slightly older, sardonic, popular netball star) who has also been "compounded" like her.

In Part II, Cassie and Ginger set about searching for other Cassandras like themselves. They find Mary, a talkative and overwhelmingly self-assured aristocratic girl who knows a lot of history from her former life; Bibi, a younger Jewish girl who plays the piano; and Sanda, daughter of an MP, who is at boarding school and doesn't come into this book much. [note that although they have other nicknames, Cassie, Ginger, Bibi, Mary and Sanda are all really named Cassandra]

In Part III, Ginger becomes Patrol Leader of a new Guides patrol comprised largely of Cassandras and their allies. Mary writes a play about the Holocaust that their patrol performs to raise money to rescue children from Hamburg, Germany. Various people become suspicious and try to figure out what is going on, causing trouble.
In the end, they raise enough money to rescue 11 children from Hamburg. They realize that they will not be returning to their lives in the future but are going to be living out their lives here in 1939 and beyond.

There are 2 romantic subplots: one between Cassie and Ginger's brother Philip, who has a printing press in his basement where he prints his school newspaper; and one between Ginger and the Guides Captain (and senior science mistress) Pam Archer, who leaves at the end of this book to become a research fellow in physics at Oxford. Both subplots will develop further in later books.

There will be a sequel involving the school evacuating to a Jacobean country house outside of Oxford, and a Nazi plot to steal the crown jewels. Once I find a publisher for this first book! I had several research assitants for this book (long story...) and so while I'm sure it's full of errors, it's also full of accurate history. Anybody out there know a literary agent or publisher who might like it? The only author to whom the writing is at all analogous is Antonia Forest (with a dash of Rumer Godden, I think) and it's kind of hard to market that when people are looking for, say, J.K. Rowling.

Re: Antonia, you've let me down!

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

That does sound interesting; I love things set around the War.

Though I bet that when you become rich and famous people will pop up on LJ expounding on how there was a character called Cassandra who knew the future in the Iliad, in the same cheery, helpful 'wow, wouldya believe it?' tone that they mention that J.K Rowling borrowed a couple of names from Shakespeare and did not in fact invent hippogriffs. :)

[forester48.livejournal.com]

Let's face it, the Kingscote system does not tie in to anything that happens these days. Presumably, in 1948, when Autumn term was published, matriculation was still going on and it just does not correlate to O' Levels Also, perhaps people worked more for scholarships and exhibitions into university than just doing A'Levels and also did other things in the Sixth apart from preparing for public exams.

Other school stories written at around the same time show similar vagueness. I rememember, as a child, being exasperated by stories where the youngest form, often populated by 13-14 yr olds, always seemed to begin straight in at the Lower Fourth or Upper Third with no mention of any lower forms at all. The worst was Enid Blyton's St Clare's stories which, okay, did have a First Form but they were 15!! which meant they'd be 20 odd by the time they reached the Sixth.

The other thing that always annoyed me about school stories was that the pupils never seemed to be less than 13 and yet the readership would surely be lower.

At least AF had realistic 12 year olds, not retarded 14 year olds as heroines of AT.

I forgive her vagueness about form groupings, even the maddening gap between Lower V (has to be O' Level year)and the Sixth, otherwise I would go quite dotty.

Sixth Form

[richenda.livejournal.com]

In the 1950s we had four categories of Sixth Formers. There were two Lower Sixths - one for people doing General Studies and one for people doing GCE A level. Then there was the Sixth Form, two categories, people doing A level and third year Sixth, doing state scholarships and Oxbridge entrance (although there were some bright people who got state scholarships in their A level year).