American School System

[TheMacDonaldMan]

How do American School grades work? For example, is 10th grade 15 and 16 year old etc? It would be greatful if someone made a list of grades and ages

[Buenchico]

Compulsory school education starts in the USA (as it does in most countries around the world) at age 6.

So
Grade 1 = 6- to 7-year-olds
Grade 2 = 7- to 8-year-olds
and so on.

i.e. add 5 to the Grade number to find the age at which children start in that Grade.

[TheMacDonaldMan]

Thank you :-)

[Marshwarble]

Surely most countries don't have a compulsory school system? Vatican City? Libya? MINT countries?

[mikey4444]

A word of caution here. The Grades don't always mean a certain age.

Years ago, I did a "Show and Tell" for my New Hampshire friends local school. Her daughter was about 7-8. I noticed that 2 boys seemed to be considerably bigger than the rest of the class. When I enquired about this to the Teacher, she said that those 2 boys had not graduated from the Grade last year and they had to do it again. I'm not sure at what point this sort of thing stops, as it doesn't make sense for hulking great lads of 11 to be still in the lower grades !

Actually, the "Show and Tell" came back to haunt me years later. The kids had never met anyone from Wales before, so they were very keen to know all about Wales. I told them what things were like here...what we ate, our customs, etc. We got on the subject of animals. Now, in that part of New Hampshire, they have bears, moose, poisonous snakes, raccoons, etc. I wasn't going to let Wales be outdone, so I told them that we still had dragons, who lived in the mountains of Snowdonia, and that was why we had a red dragon on our flag ! The kids lapped it up ! Their eyes were like saucers.

About 12-13 years later, the daughter of my friends had a boyfriend round for the afternoon, a huge great bearded 20 year old, and he told me that he remembered me from that "Show and Tell" all those years ago. He asked me if there really were dragons still living in Wales. When I hesitated for a few seconds before replying, he gave me a broad grin, and said he thought I was pulling his leg ! But he did say that part of him DID believe in dragons, up until he was at least 16 years old !

[Clanad]

Actually, for most School Districts here in the U.S. it's important to understand that standards are set by the local school district rather than a Federal Government imposed standards.

The starting age for school children is based on their birthday in many cases. I was only 5 years old when I started 1st grade, but that was because my birthday was going to occur within just a few weeks. I was one of about 10 students who were 17 years old when graduated from high school (grade 12) out of a class of about 150.

Additionally, as already stated, students can be held over for a year or more when they don't meet standards. We had a Chinese immigrant child that came to the U.S. at an age to enroll in the 7th grade (about age 13) but had such a difficult time with language that he was 19 years old when graduated from 12th grade. Thing is, he's now an astro-engineer for NASA designing a next generation infra-red telescope that will be deployed in 2018.

Grades 1 through 6 are considered "grade" school while grades 7 through 9 are referred to as "Junior High School" and grades 10 through 12 are "High School" (Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors).

Many 12th grade high school "Seniors" now take on-line courses and earn credits for the University level education called "post secondary"...