Education in England

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Potsdam (Institut für Anglistik/ Amerikanistik), course: Cultural Studies Great Britain, language: English, abstract: The last year I spent abroad as a foreign language assistant in England where I was teaching German from year 7 to 13 at a grammar school for girls. As a result of my time there I decided to write a paper about the educational system in Great Britain because there are some differences between the German and British education. Teaching only girls offered me something that I will never experience in a German school. Single- sex schools are non- existing here or just to a rare amount and although I experienced the teaching as positive, there are also disadvantages of single- sex learning. "One positive effect of being at a girls school" most of my girls said last year, is "that you are not distracted by the classroom- behaviour of the boys". If this very common way in England of separating the genders in different schools is supportive for the school results is a question which I am going to talk about in my work. Besides that I'd like to find out if the so called "gender gap" is really existing and what is meant by that. As a basis for my paper I'd like to give a short introduction to the English school system. Following that I will deal with the education politics during the period of Thatcherism and New Labour to find out which role education played in the past years in British politics and which reforms were made recently. It is obvious that the political dimensions of education are broad, and for that reason I am going to name only the main important changes. In the main part of my work I will consider the problems of inequalities in English secondary schools with special regard to the "gender gap".
The literature I have worked with is taken from the internet especially the one about the politic parties and their policies. I also used certain books about British culture and society which will be listed on page 14. It is important to mention that the names (Great) Britain and UK stand in my work for the entire country including Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. If I am talking about England it will be named like that.