Present Day g.B.: System of Education in gb.

General information: It is divided into four main parts: primary education, secondary education, further education and higher education.

Students are assessed at the end of each stage. The most important assessment occurs at age 16 when students pursue their GCSE's or General Certificate of Secondary Education.

Primary and Secondary (K-12) Education

More than 90% of students attend publicly-funded state schools. Primary schools usually include both girls and boys as pupils. Secondary schools may be either single-sex or co-educational. Education departments in England, Scotland and Wales fund schools through a Local Education. In Northern Ireland, schools are largely financed from public funds through five Education and Library Boards.

National Curriculum in England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Primary and secondary- a full-time education.

National Curriculum core subjects are: English, mathematics and science; Foundation subjects are design and technology; information and communication technology; history; geography; modern foreign languages; music; art and design; physical education…Northern Ireland : schools can develop additional curriculum elements to meet pupils' individual needs and circumstances.

The GCSE is a single-subject examination set and marked by independent examination boards. (up to ten GCSE examinations in different subjects, including mathematics and English language )

After taking GCSEs- leave secondary schooling; -choose to continue their education at vocational or technical colleges- take a higher level of secondary school examinations known as AS-Levels after an additional year of study. Following two years of study, students may take A-Level (short for Advanced Level) examinations, which are required for university entrance in the UK.

Scotland

Scotland has its own qualification framework. After seven years of primary education and four years of compulsory secondary education, students aged 15 to 16 may take the Scottish Certificate of Education (SCE). It is recognized throughout the UK as the equivalent to GCE A-levels and is usually the entry qualification for university.

Grades and Transcripts

Schools in the UK do not generally rank pupils within their year; currently, the principal standards are the GCSE, SCE and AS and A-Level examination results.

Further Education

Once a student finishes secondary education they have the option to extend into further education to take their A-Levels or other such qualifications. UK students planning to go to college or university must complete further education.

Post-secondary and Higher Education

Undergraduate degrees take three years to complete in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while at Scottish universities they last four years. At the graduate level, a master's degree is normally earned in a single year, a research master's degree takes two years and a doctoral degree is often completed in three years.

British dialects and social variants.

a) West country dialects;

b) Norfolk dialect;

c) Yorkshire dialect;

d) Estuary English;

e) Brummie;

f) Geordie;

g) Cockney;

h) Scouse.

British English (BrE) is a term used to distinguish the form of the English language used in the British Isles from forms used elsewhere. It includes all the varieties of English used within the Isles, including those found in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

there is significant variation in grammar, usage, spelling, and vocabulary within English as used in the UK and Ireland.Dialects and accents vary not only between the nations of the British Isles, for example in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, but also within these countries themselves.

For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the 9th century, the form of language spoken in London and the East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and thus the form generally accepted for use in the law, government, literature and education within the British Isles.

The most common form of English used by the British ruling class is that of south-east England (the area around the capital, London, and the ancient English university towns of Oxford and Cambridge). This form of the language is associated with Received Pronunciation (RP), which is still regarded by many people outside the UK (especially in the United States) as "the British accent".

Scottish English is usually taken to mean the standard form of the English language used in Scotland, often termed Scottish Standard English. It is the language normally used in formal, non-fictional written texts in Scotland

Scottish English is the result of language contact between Scots and English after the 17th century.The standard spelling, grammar, and punctuation of Scottish English tend to follow the style of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). However, there are some unique characteristics, mainly in the phonological and phonetic systems, many of which originate in the country's two autochthonous languages, the Scottish Gaelic language and Scots.

General items are outwith, meaning outside of; and wee, the Scots word for small. . In some areas there is a substantial non-standard lexis (shared with Scots) apparently acquired from the Romany language and from Eastern European languages; examples include gadge (lad, chap) and peeve (alcoholic drink).

Pronunciation

• L is usually dark, It is a rhotic accent, The use of glottal stops for [t], • Vowel length is usually regarded as non-phonemic, ? SSE contrasts [o?r] and [u?r], as in shore and pour vs. sure and poor.

syntax

Syntactical differences are few though in colloquial speech shall and ought are wanting, must is marginal for obligation and may is rare. • Can I come too? or Can I come as well?' for "May I come too?" • It's your shot. for "It's your turn." • How no? for "Why not?"

The use of "How?" meaning "Why?" is unique to Scottish and Northern Irish English.

Note that in Scottish English, the first person declarative I amn't invited and interrogative "Amn't I invited?" are both possible.

Welsh English, Anglo-Welsh, or Wenglish

refer to the dialects of English spoken in Wales by Welsh people.

• Lengthening of all vowels is common in strong valleys accents. • A tendency towards using an alveolar trill /r/ (the 'rolled r') in place of an approximant /?/ (the 'normal English r'). • Sometimes adding the word "like" or "indeed" to the end of a sentence for emphasis, or using them as stop-gaps.

Placing something at the start of a sentence emphasises it: "furious, she was". Periphrasis and auxiliary verbs are used in spoken Welsh, resulting in the English: "He do go there", "I do do it", particularly in the so-called Wenglish accent.

There is a very wide range of regional accents within Wales.

The sing-song Welsh accent familiar to many English people is generally associated with South Wales. The accents of North Wales are markedly different. In North West Wales the accent is less sing-song, with a more consistently high-pitched voice and the vowels pressed to the back of the throat. In North East Wales, the accent can sound like that of Cheshire or Staffordshire. Scouse-like Liverpool accents are used around Queensferry and Flint.

HIBERNO-ENGLISH

Hiberno-English is the form of the English language spoken in Ireland. Hiberno-English is also referred to as Irish English and occasionally/

• With some local exceptions 'r' is pronounced wherever it occurs in the word, making Irish English a generally rhotic dialect.

• /t/ is rarely pronounced as a plosive where it does not occur word-initially; instead, it is pronounced as a fricative between [s] and [?].

• The distinction between w /w/ and wh /?/, as in wine vs whine is preserved.

• The /a?/ in "night" may be pronounced [??].

Irish lacks words which directly translate as "yes" or "no", and instead repeats the verb in a question, possibly negated, to answer. People in Ireland have a tendency to repeat the verb, positively or negatively, instead of using "yes" or "no".

• "Are you coming home soon?" "I am."

• "Is your mobile charged?" "It isn't."

It is common for Irish English-speakers in north Leinster and Ulster to use the word "aye" as a weak form of "yes" /

use the verb "to be" in English similarly to how they would in Irish, using a "does be/do be" (or "bees", although less frequently) construction to indicate this latter continuous present:

• "He does be working every day."

It is also common to end sentences with 'no?' or 'yeah?'

• "He's not coming today, no?" "The bank's closed now, yeah?"

Irish English also always uses the "light l" sound, and the naming of the letter 'h' as 'haitch' is standard. A is often pronounce "Ah" and Z as "Ezed".

Amn't is used as an abbreviation of "am not", by analogy with "isn't" and "aren't". This can be used as a tag question ("I'm making a mistake, amn't I?").

Reduplication is not an especially common feature of Irish; nevertheless in rendering Irish phrases into English it is occasionally used:

• ar bith corresponds to English at all, so the stronger ar chor ar bith gives rise to the form at all at all I've no money at all at all.

• Now is often used at the end of sentences or phrases as a semantically empty word, completing an utterance without contributing any apparent meaning. Examples include "Bye now" (= "goodbye"), "There you go now" (= when giving someone something), "Ah now!" (= expressing dismay)

• Yoke is typically used in place of the word "thing", for instance, "gimme that yoke there."

Lexicon

• Bold describes someone (usually a child) who is impudent, naughty or badly behaved. The British English meaning, "brave", is rarely encountered.

• Cat - bad, terrible. Sometimes "catmalogeon". Found particularly in Sligo, but sometimes used elsewhere.

• Press is almost invariably used instead of Cupboard. The hot press is the airing cupboard.

• Ratchet, used mostly in Cork and Kerry, refers to a thing. See "yoke"

• Fierce, used as a stronger intensifier than 'very'; e.g., "This is fierce bad weather we're having".

• Gammy - bad, broken, crooked, unstable, improbably lucky.

• Jacks : toilet, usually in a pub or similar. As in "mind my handbag.