Cross cultural adventures

[kushali]

The company I work for has a small team of developers in Bulgaria. They're in the US right now and having them in the office has sparked a lot of interesting conversations about the differences between the education systems in different countries

Comments

[mholmesiv]

When I was growing up, we didn't have "kindergarten" either. I went to school directly into grade 1.
Our school also ran January (normally around the 10th) to December (Normally around the 5th), and our vacations were significantly different to the US standard. It always confused us to watch american shows where they had a whole 3 months off in a row.

Another thing that confused us a lot was seeing kids in different grades in the same class together. That just doesn't really happen in South Africa. Our syllabus is pretty standardized, and you can't do grade 9 math unless you're in grade 9.

Our Grade 12 (Matric) results are generally posted in the national newspapers, it's always fun checking out how many A grades your friends got, and who passed and failed, and who got Matric exemptions (ie, did well enough to not have to write university entrance exams). In general, in a year, there are fewer than 20 students across the country who get 6 (or more, but 6 is the number of subjects you normally take from 10th to 12th grade - unless you do extra subjects outside of normal school hours) A results. About 10% get 1 or more. There's no curve, and they don't adjust grades based on what the average score was.