Talking about education

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!