Gap fill

I tried to practice gap fill, but my score is...21%...!

I have to learn more vocabularies...



Education Gap-fill exercise

When the desks in the classroom are in straight rows and the pupils sit silently while the teacher talks and writes on the board, education is teacher-controlled.

When there are groups of tables and the pupils are facing in different directions and the teacher talks to each one in turn, education is individually-based.

In Britain, education is compulsory between the ages of 5 and 16. After that, it is optional; you don't have to stay!

Most schools are state-controlled. The fees are paid for out of taxation. However, some schools are private. It can cost several thousand pounds per year to send a child to one of these schools. Many are boarding establishments. This means that children live as well as study in the school premises. They eat and sleep there. Some of these schools are for girls only or boys only. These are called single-sex schools, but in recent times most parents prefer to send children of all ages to coeducational schools.

In the 1950s and 60s, teachers in Britain were usually very strict. They were permitted to beat their pupils with a cane or hit them with a slipper. Consequently, they were feared and respected, though some people did not have real respect for them.

Nowdays, school in Britain is usually more relaxed. Teachers are more liberal and spend more time giving advice to individual pupils. That is to say they play the role of consultants. Either they come to you to offer help or you can easily go to them. They are much more approachable than the teachers of the past.

However, some parents are unhappy about the new relaxed atmosphere in many schools. They prefer their children to be put under pressure. They feel that their children cannot be trusted to learn by themselves and that the teachers are failing to check that the pupils have learnt anything. Informal assessment is not sufficient. They prefer their children to be tested regularly.

These parents are often unhappy too about the way their children are put into classes. Some schools prefer to put pupils in mixed-ability groups so that the fast ones can help the slow ones, but ambitious parents usually prefer the classes to be streamed. Of course, they want their own child to be in the top group - the A-stream and certainly not the D-stream!

At Secondary School level, between the ages of 11 and 16, most classes are subject-based. For example, a 45-minute period of Mathematics is followed by a French period of similar duration.

Some Primary Schools operate a different system, They do not timetable different areas of study for 45-minute periods in the morning or afternoon. They prefer the integrated day. Not all parents like this system. They would prefer to see even small children following set periods in Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.

The Government has responded by making all schools follow a National Curriculum with some compulsory subjects.