In Great Britain education is compulsory for children from 5 to 16 years of age. Before 5 some children attend Nursery schools, while most children start their basic education in an Infant School which is the first stage of Primary Education. From 7 to 11 they attend Junior Schools, the second stage of Primary education. At the age of eleven children transfer to Comprehensive Schools. These schools give general education and a wide range of academic courses leading to the public examinations taken 16. They also provide some vocational courses before the 1960 there were two main kinds of state schools in Britain: '' grammar'', ''modern ''.The grammar schools were for most intelligent children and the secondary modern schools were for the less intelligent children.
Along with the state schools, they’re about 500 private schools in Britain that comprise about 6% of the school population. Most of these Independent or Public Schools charge fees and there are boarding schools, where the children actually live in the school. Any child may leave school at 16 when all children take the school-leaving examinations and get a certificate of secondary education. Those who want to continue their education at a University have to stay on at school for two more years and take another exam. Advanced level examination the Universities and Polytechnics choose their students, as there are no entrance examinations.
The leading universities in England are Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Each university consists of a number of faculties: medicine, arts, law, music, natural science, commerce and education. Besides universities, there are other types of higher educational institutions: Polytechnics and Colleges of different kinds.
