Vocabulary: education
Intermediate to advanced level (B1-C1)

A good exercise (especially for Cambridge FCE) is to think about your own education and how you could describe it. Here is someone’s story:

When I was little I went to nursery school. Most of the time we played games and had fun but at the age of 5 I started primary school. We had to sit at desks and at break time I remember the playground being full of children I didn’t know. School education was a bit of a shock.

As I got older I got used to school and particularly enjoyed doing maths but English was a little more difficult! At the age of 12 (year 7), I went to secondary school. It was pretty large with over 1,400 pupils. The school was rather academic so there was pressure to do well in exams. Some of the teachers were quite strict but most were friendly. There were also a lot of extra-curricular activities such as music, drama, theatre visits and a large range of clubs.

At 16 I had to take GCSE’s and fortunately my grades were good enough to continue to the sixth form and study for my A-levels. We were given a lot of homework including a large number of essays. After 2 years of study I took my exams and managed to get to college.

University life was very different. We had a significant amount of independence and could choose which lectures to attend, although tutorials were compulsory unless you had a very good excuse. The tuition fees were not cheap and this made me even more determined not to flunk my finals but to do my best and get a good grade.

After graduating with a 2:1 degree, I decided not to do a masters or attempt a PhD but to start working for a small technology company. I went on a large number of courses and even had a mentor at work. Their coaching of me was incredibly useful.

I suppose education never ends.

Notes:

In Britain most schools are state (government) schools and are paid for through taxation. There are also independent (private) schools. The most well-known independent schools such as Eton are known as public schools!

nursery school
primary school
secondary school (comprehensive, grammar)
sixth form (students can also study A-levels and non-academic courses such as construction, hairdressing etc at a college of further education)
desk
break
pupil
take or pass an exam
academic
extra-curricular (outside the normal academic timetable)
grade
GCSE’s and A-levels (normally taken at 16 and 18)
take an exam
homework
essays
college
university
lecture – a lecture is a talk given to a large number of students at university/college by a lecturer
tutorial – individual or small group discussion
compulsory
tuition fees
flunk an exam – fail
finals – the examinations at the end of an undergraduate degree course
do one’s best
graduate (noun and verb) – the noun is very unstressed on the last syllable
masters
PhD, DPhil or doctorate – doctor of philosophy in any subject. You normally have to write a thesis after doing a post-graduate degree course.
degree
course
mentor (noun and verb)
coaching