What year is Lower 5?

[Beetrootccio]

school year??

Antonia, i mean

I think it was Ruth and Connie, P. at that knowledge. Antonia Forest is really good though, unlike the formulaic Blyton.

Oh I loved Blyton (guiltily) as a kid too. But A Forest really writes well, imo.

At my (very traditional) secondary school, the years went:
Lower IV
Upper IV
Lower V
Middle V
Upper V
Lower VI
Upper VI

Scummy I loved the Antonia Forrest books.

But in some schools wasn't Remove not just for the thick ones? haven't been to that sort of school but i think my father did an extra year of 5th form in a Remove form, after doing O levels or similar early. So you'd have Removes for the thickos and also for the bright ones who were a year ahead and needed to mark time for a year.

all very confusing for those of us who didn't go to those schools.

So why, in the Enid Blyton books, did they only spend a term or two in some "years" and over a year in other "years"? I used to puzzle over this.

I think in Malory Towers they languished for ages in the First form (starting at age 12), and then whizzed through various 3rd, lower and upper 4th and 5ths, in a couple of years for all those 5 "years".

Fennel- there was one book per school year in MT and St Clare's from what I can recall. I guess that EB span the first book out to set the scenes in our minds for subsequent books.

The school books that bugged me were the Chalet school books as I could never figure out how old the girls were by their form titles . You never seemed to get girls retaking exams in those books.

Re the Antonia Forrest books I think Nicky and Lawrie were behind their peers academically as they had been ill everytime they had been meant to go to school which might explain why they were in that particular class .

For really wacky class numbering you need jesuit schools (state or private). The year group names go something like: Grammar, Syntax, Poetry and Rhetoric, with Rhetoric being the 6th Form.

Chalet school girls didn't really do exams, especially in the early years. They sort of "finished" gracefully when they reached marriageable age.

Lower 5 is equivalent to year 10. They called it that when I was at school but isn't it being phased out now?

The other problem with the Chalet books is that the author often forgot how old the girls were, or what their names were, or how they were related to each other, so there isn't even consistency between the different books.

The Blyton school books had mixed age classes, but not mixed ability classes, so you tended to stay in the same class unitl you were of a standard to move up to the next one. The chalet school was similar ini that Jo's triplets were in different years at one point (before Margot went to Canada).
I love school stories, me

At the DS's school the first years are called the Shells, so Mrs Bloggs' form would be Shell B etc

Actually ballet grades used to phase me as well - I know it went from something like pre-primary for the LOs then grades one-four, pre-elementary but what was next? Elementary?

I ducked out of classes in grade three so I never got to find out .

at Marlborough "Shell" is the first year there (so equiv to Lower V/Year 9)

At our secondary school, the years (inexplicably) started with II, so

yr7=II
yr8=III
yr9=IV
yr10=Lower V
yr11=Upper V
and then Lower and upper VI

I went there for 7 years, and was still none the wiser about it when I left

My knowledge of years is only through my mum, DH and school stories.

I love Antonia Forest's books by the way.

.

Excellent, more Chalet school fans here as well . Problem with their school years was that it depended on your ability so you had all sorts in one class.

They had Intermediate Fifth (Inter 5th) which was originally for people who needed a bit more time etc on things (or were Len, Con and Margot and just extraordinary) but then everyone naturally went through that form.

My old secondary school was

Year 7 (1st year) - Lower IV
Year 8 (2nd year) - Upper IV
Year 9 (3rd year)- Lower V
Year 10 (4th year)- Middle V
Year 11 (5th year)- Upper V
Year 12 - Lower VI
Year 13 - Upper VI