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For those of you who left school quite some time ago a lot of the terminology for the English education system must seem fairly strange. So over the next few week, we at Supa Swap thought we would explain some of the more popular terms.

This week we thought we would loom at class/form names.

Originally class names started at 1 and went through till 6 or the 6th Form as it became known. Recently you will hear phrases like year 11 and this must be a little confusing.

So lets start at the GCSE year (O Levels as we knew them). What was known as the 5th Form, the year we took the final O Level exam, is now year 11 and all years below that go in numerical order, 4th Form is Year 10, 3rd Form is Year 9 and so on.

Funny enough the 6th Form is still fairly much known as Lower 6th and Upper 6th and not Years 12 and 13, although you will hear people refer to them as that.

There are also groups of Years known as Key Stages and relate to the National Curriculum. Years 7, 8 and 9 are Key stage 3 and the GCSE years, 10 and 11 are Key Stage 4.

Below is a table that should hopefully make sense.

Before I worked for Supa Swap, I  remember the bemused look on my students face when I used to start an IT lesson (that is information technology in case you didn't know) with the sentence "This is a book and it can be found in the school library".

You may think this is a strange way to start a lesson about technology but it was done to highlight a very important point about online research; sometimes it is not very good.

Anyone can publish anything online. I am a year 10 pupil and I have just written what I consider to be the best essay ever on Henry VIII. In fact I am so pleased with it that I am going to put it up on a webpage for the world to see. Unfortunately what I have not published is the fact that my History teacher hated it and gave me an E grade for it. So my essay sits on the web for all to see with no justification. (what do teachers know anyway).

Justify your Research

Well hopefully you can see my point. Research done online mush be backed up with other research from other mediums like books, which tend to be correct as they have gone through the publishing process. The internet is a wonderful resource that can enhance our education but it is not a quick solution to serious research, otherwise we are in danger of entering a society where our facts become diluted with half truths and misconceptions like a form digital cheese whispers.

One more point for those of you in higher education following a philosophy course. If this article is stating that you can not trust what is on the internet, can you trust this article. If you therefore can not trust this article is it possible that you can trust information on the internet, which means you can trust this article. See if you can get yourself out of that loop of an argument.

News has emerged this week that college dons at Oxford University have been enjoying free lunches at the tax payers expense.

Labour MP David Lammy has hit out at this practice with the current background of tuition fee hikes for students across the county.

University Traditions

Certainly at Supa Swap we are finding it hard to justify this "tradition" at one of the most prestigious universities in the country if not the world.

Oxford have hit back and have stated that none of the lunches are funded by the taxpayer but from the Universities own funds that it uses to cover the costs not covered by its income from the public.

This does beg the question, how big are these private funds, where are they from and why have they not been taken into account when deciding to increase student tuition fees?