If you don’t live in the U.K., what unimportant thing does your school system obsess over?

[Flynnstone]

In the U.K. policing uniform takes up a disproportionate amount of time. What is the equivalent pointless thing where you’re from?

True and the backpacks (Schulranzen) cost around 200€. The child also needs stationery and books costing around the same. The first day of school the child gets a Schultüte, a big cone full of gifts and sweets. Then the family have a party/meal out. First day is quite expensive! Also the police do wait at the airport for the first/last days of term.

I agree totally - but when i say it i am lambasted by people here, we should be doing our best to keep it alive i a, told, its a beautiful language. I actually detest it cant bear to hear it on the radio or telly, its switched over straight away. We have a population of aprox 5.5 million people here and only about 250,000 speak it as their day to day language. The money that is wasted on having documents printed in irish and english, signage etc is ridiculous. I moved over from the UK and missed the cut over age to drop it as a subject so had to learn it, the struggle was had, and still 30 years later detest it. A good friend of mine had to give up primary school teaching dream as she had the marks for the corse but kept failing the irish interview for the college as tye interview was in the Norther dialect and she struggled to understand it, so ridcoulsue and we crying out for primary school teachers here.
Dont forget the pupils who do their leaving or junior cert in Irish get extra marks so helps with the leaving cert points race

The way to remember it is that pen has an "e" in it.

Titration? As in measuring things out in chemistry? Wow. That is very specific. In the UK we have Maths Olympiads (are they global?) but they aren’t that big a deal, and are individual rather than school vs school competition.

Not my children, but my primary school in the 70’s. In year 6 we had to cover all our excercise books. If your parents had the money you could buy coloured plastic covers in the town stationery shop. If they didn’t you were expected to cover your books in wallpaper. If your mum had picked heavily embossed paper (mine had) you had to use a reel of tape to keep it down, and spent half the year doing running repairs when it detached. If your parents were the type that preferred paint and had no wallpaper or the cash for the plastic covers you were torn a new one. To this day, and whenever I bought my kids stationery at the start of Term 1, I remember Lynne Rackham being made to stand and be harangued by the teacher in front of the whole class.

Sorry !!!!!! WTF
That was not me what so ever - i never ever ever wanted to be a teacher
Nor did i apply to be a teacher
So get down of your high horse
There is a lot more to being a good teacher than just speaking irish too

That's the idea. Great believers in everyone rubbing along together, teamwork etc...

In Finland everyone has to learn Swedish because of the Swedish speaking minority, its fairly controversial, with a lot of people being against forced Swedish and others thinking its very important as a significant minority in the country speak it as their native language, but the silly thing is that they learn proper Swedish in school but Swedish speaking Finns speak their own dialect (there's not a huge difference but it still seems to me that they ought to learn the dialect that people actually speak here. Otherwise I think its good because the more languages you learn as a child, the easier it is to learn more.)

My son isn't allowed to even take in a sharpener, compass or scissors to secodnary school!

Are those note books additional for notes etc or that thry do their daily school work in?

What about kids who's families can't afford it all?

I agree with pp.
Primary school teachers in Ireland need to speak Irish well.
Many of them don’t speak it well enough (though they obviously passed the exams) and then their students are the ones to suffer as it’s not used in the classroom enough.

I agree it’s hard for primary teachers to be experts in all subjects, but unless the system is completely revamped so small children have a number of different teachers throughout the day, their teachers do need to speak Irish well.

My eldest sister was born mid 70s and she had to cover her books, either wallpaper or that weird plastic sheet stuff. Like, why???? I was sad our school didn't so the same tho

France again.

Obsession with the principle of égalité, but only equality of opportunity not of outcome.

So no streaming (bright kids are bored in class, slower kids get left behind) because the principle of égalité means everyone must have the same education irrespective of ability to learn in that way.

Also no differentiation of teaching in class: the teachers job is to deliver the content, kids keep up as best they can, parents pay to fill the gaps with tutors, therapists and a multitude of specialists - and thus the hierarchy is established by others means while the system claims to uphold the principle of equality.

You can imagine how well SEND kids do in this system 🙄

We had to wrap our books in wallpaper or clear plastic wrap too (not now, when I was a kid). We also had a daily assembly where a passage from the bible was read and then we had to sing a couple of hymns (state school). One of the teachers would really go for it and turn bright red by the middle of the song. We also got given milk daily in mini bottles.

I was still covering my books in the early 00s! Either sticky backed plastic or waxed paper. The idea was to protect the books. My school was fairly old fashioned!

Kids went to school in Saudi Arabia for primary.
Hats were the major thing. No hat, no outdoor play - all year round.

One thing I find fascinating is the rules for when everyone is kept in a break time - so an English school might keep the kids in if its raining too hard, our Saudi school kept them in if it was over 38C. Friends in Russia were kept in if it was below (and i might have misremembered this) minus 40C.

Ireland - Obsession with the leaving cert. Every single year it makes the news the day it starts, radio and newspapers report what questions came up on the exams, teachers and students interviewed about their thoughts. The whole country is told what came up on English paper 1 etc.

My kids have been to two different types of school in the US, a RC elementary and a public (state) high school.

I don't remember any untoward fussing about anything in either school even though the elementary school had a uniform.

There was a list of school supplies every year for the elementary school that was every bit as specific as the French list posted upthread. Every year, the list had at least twenty two items, with sizes and preferred brands. However, you could get away with using last year's markers, highlighters, rulers, folders, crayons, paints, protractors, etc. We also had to supply items like antibac wipes, paper towels, boxes of tissues, ziploc bags.

The only thing (and it really only became a Thing from about 1998 on) was hydration. Water bottles were de rigeur beginning about the start of the century.

That is a hallmark of American childhood / school ethos too.

They are for daily school work. I've never heard of people not being able to afford it. If you are out of work there are fairly generous benefits, especially if you have children, so it shouldn't be an issue. There is very much a societal expectation that you put your children first.

The French aren't squeamish about pointy things. You could take a folding pocket knife to school and no-one would bat an eyelid - in fact in rural areas it would be completely normal, much like it used to be in the UK not so long ago.

Mine went to an American school in France and then an American school in UK. The dress code was a pain, and only applied to girls - perfectly acceptable for boys to wear a vest top and short shorts but girls’ shorts needed to be just above the knee, and vest tops were not allowed. Ditto short skirts or anything else that revealed a bit of leg, arm or chest.

Also in Italy.
Not only did we have to buy A4 notebooks with specific lines, margins and squares, we also had to buy coloured plastic covers for each subject.
They don’t learn to read until 6yo and get really frustrated with all the colouring in. I just taught mine to read in English at 4/5 and Italian came naturally 2(!) years later…
There’s also the obligatory Summer work book. DD got hers sent back with a bad mark because she’d answered everything but hadn’t done the bloody colouring…
Higher up there is SO MUCH time wasted in “listening” to other students doing oral tests in every subject. 24 students at 15 minutes each is 6 hours of lesson time wasted in each subject every term!
Books are over €100 a year, even buying second hand. Fortunately DD went to Classics high school and the books don’t change much. DS at Scientific high school had to buy most of his new as they wanted the most up to date books.

They also had the French stationery list with the weird paper!

That’s interesting. I have a question if I may. I have taught a number of Polish children in the past in the U.K. All of them have refused to take their shoes and socks off in the school hall. All the children in question were born in the U.K. or came as small children. Is it common in Poland to never be barefoot?

"Not squeamish about pointy things" ?
Knives?
Are you suggesting that schools in the UK have overreacted to knife incidents?.