Jargon Buster
Below is a list of words and phrases commonly used in education. Selecting them will reveal their definitions:
- Answer:
- There are only a few geographical areas in the UK that still use this system, which was most popular in the early 1980s (there were just 171 middle schools remaining in the UK at the end of 2013). The First School takes children from Reception to Year 4, the Middle School from Years 5 – 8, with the Upper school catering for Years 9 – 13.
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- Eleven plus is mainly used as admissions test in areas that still have state grammar schools, the Eleven Plus is taken in the final year of primary education.
- Answer:
- A free School is a school that is funded directly by the Department for Education and run by a non-profit-making charitable trust.
- Answer:
- These are schools that are independent in funding (relying on tuition fees, endowments and so on) and independent in governance. Independent, public and private schools are fundamentally the same.
- Answer:
- LEA is the Local Education Authority, the local council responsible for education in an area.Learning Objective (LO): A description of the skills, knowledge and attitudes you can expect your child to acquire.
- Answer:
- A learning objective (LO) is a description of the skills, knowledge and attitudes you can expect your child to acquire.
- Answer:
- Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. It brings together the regulation and inspection of day care and children’s social care and the inspection of LA children’s services, schools, colleges, initial teacher training, work-based learning, adult education and more.
- Answer:
- A parent council is a body of parents which represents parents and provides a forum for them to put forward their views to the headteacher and the governing body of their children’s school.
- Answer:
- This is a formal test in June of Year 1 (age 6), when your child reads out a list of words to a teacher. It tests their knowledge of phonics (the sounds that letters and groups of letters make) rather than their reading or comprehension skills.
- Answer:
- Prep schools prepare children for senior school and typically take children from the age of 7 up to either 11 or 13 depending on the school. Pre-Prep schools take children as young as 2 up to 7. So Prep and Pre-Prep together are the equivalent of nursery, primary and junior school in the state sector.