A+ for GBR

After you watch a few British programs, you start to pick up on a few often used acronyms and words, "A-levels", "GCSE", "I-Bacc" to name a few.  Words that were just made to be googled.  What began as a quick way to verify that "A-levels" were basically the British version of the SATs, turned into a 2 hour study session of the British Education system.  As ridiculous as this sounds, it was actually quite the page turner.  Thanks to links within links, I  kept going further down the rabbit hole.  During my little expedition, I learned quite a bit, mostly that, as much as Brits complain, their education system seems vastly better than ours, as well as:

* It's like alphabet soup over there.  There's an acronym for every little program, system and test, and apparently, they have no problems keeping them all straight.

* Students between the ages of 7-11 will now read 2 (count it, 2) Shakespeare plays as well as poetry before passing on to the next level.  Not sure about your schools, but I didn't even hear the Bard's name until High School.

* From what I can tell, students basically choose their own curriculum for high school and can decide which specific areas they'd like to study.  If I could have opted out of Math class, high school would have been so much better for me!

* Uniforms for 99% of schools.  As someone who wore a uniform for 13 years, I wholly support this idea!

As well as plenty of other reasons, that are much too difficult to decipher and explain, the number one reason, Britain's schools are better (besides just being in GBR) is:

*  The schools are paid for by the state.  No tuition for primary, upper or college for parents and no student loans to have to pay back.  I don't know how they afford this but how many more students here in the US would shoot for the moon if they didn't have to worry if their families could afford their education?