What a lovely topic to discuss about considering the fact I am starting school in around 2-3 weeks. Yeep. That's right. Starting the 14th of september my summer vacation will be officialy over  But that's actually pretty cool since I started to miss a lot of my friends though the exams and stuff like that will be starting again. 

When it comes to our educational system we're starting from the age of seven (kindergarten being optional until then). At the age of six, children must join the "preparatory school year", which is mandatory in order to enter the first grade. Schooling starts, as I said, at the age of seven, and is compulsory until the tenth grade (which corresponds with the age of sixteen or seventeen). The school educational cycle ends in the twelfth grade, when students graduate the baccalaureate. Then it's the student's choices if they want to follow a college or not.

We have lots of subjects... really lots! And most of them are compulsory until high school (which starts in 9th grade) and when we choose ourselves a profile we like. For example my class is philology/ literature so we mostly learn foreign languages and roumanian literature. Until the 10th grade I have been studying real subjects as well such as math, physics, chemistry, biology and etc. As I start the 11th year I won't be studying these anymore instead I will be having one hour per week of a subject called Ştiinţe (Sciences) which basically combines all the subjects mentioned above. I will also be getting extra english, french and roumanian classes. This is why choosing a suitable profile is important. The basics and most well-known classes for all the profiles are: Geography, History, Math, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Sociology, Logic, Philosophy, English and French (these two languages are compulsory in schools. If you wanna learn a different one you may either learn it on your own or wait until college where you can choose another language like spain/ italian/ german etc.), Sports, Music, Arts, Economy, Religion (optional), Informatics, Latin... and that's all I guess. Well of course the number of classes you've got on each subject depends on your profile and in some cases even grades (for example all profiles study philosophy but only in the 12th grade. Same applies for logic which we study only in the 9th grade or sociology in the 11th).

About the teaching and learning thing. We use the basic notebook and coursebook. Our programme is daily made of 6 hours of different classes (with a break of 10/ 20 minutes between each hour). Teacher comes, speaks and tells us what to write (unlike college where you must write on your own without having somebody to tell you which is good to note or not). We either read or solve exercises from the coursebooks. Of course we get homework and exams. Oh yeah the exams! Our grade system is made from numbers from 1 to 10. 1 is the worst and it's usually given if you are caught copying and 10 is the best. Your annual average grade on each subject though must be over 5 to pass. If your average grade on a subject is 4 for example the respective teacher will have to either give you a test or listen you verbally which you have to pass. If you get 3 subjects with an average under 5 you don't pass to the next year and you will have to repeat the current one again (for example if you are in the 11th and you didn't pass you will have to repeat the whole year once again - not very cool, huh?) The homeworks and exams depends on the teacher's style though. There are teachers which are great, sociable and not stressful but there are also ones very strict and bossy. It depends on your luck   We also sometimes use a laptop/ school pc to see various presentations (most of them are powerpoint and a lot of them made by students - yeah we sometimes get the chance to get a good grade with such a presentation and generally it's from 8-10 not less. Woohoo   )

This thing really depends from school to school. There's never a school which has exactly the same things as another. As for where do we learn there are usually classes with chairs and tables where we can stay. The number of them varies (as the number of people of a specific profile). There are profiles with 15 people while mine has 32 XD My school also has a few chemistry/ biology/ pc laboratories where we can study within the presence of a teacher. And of course a medium sized library from where we can borrow books. Yay! ^_^