> What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything".
My experience was that even if all of the students prior to university studied maths A-Levels, we all studied different topics. Before those two year A-Levels, we all studied different topics in GCSEs. There is so much time wasted giving everyone the same knowledge because of how our system is set up with different exam boards.
I don't know if this is the case in other countries.
You don't get to choose different maths A-levels in Russia. There is one state standard that every school and every student has to stick to. You can have accelerated or deeper "special schools" but you can't evade the state standard on maths or you won't get you high school diploma.
There is a state standard in England and Wales (and another standard in Scotland). It's called the National Curriculum, although I'm not sure if it has a different name for A-levels.
There are multiple implementations of that standard, in the form of exams that meet the standards. The government checks the exams satisfy their standards.
For example, an exam on history might by on the 20th century Britain, and a different one might use 19th century Europe.
Everyone in England also has to know logarithms and derivatives. There's much less flexibility for maths.
For history, the government requires that they:
• develop and extend their knowledge and understanding of specified key events, periods and societies in local, British, and wider world history; and of the wide diversity of human experience
• engage in historical enquiry to develop as independent learners and as critical and reflective thinkers
• develop the ability to ask relevant questions about the past, to investigate issues critically and to make valid historical claims by using a range of sources in their historical context
• develop an awareness of why people, events and developments have been accorded historical significance and how and why different interpretations have been constructed about them
• organise and communicate their historical knowledge and understanding in different ways and reach substantiated conclusions
The topics should be:
• from three eras: Medieval (500-1500), Early Modern (1450-1750) and Modern (1700-present day)
• on three time scales: short (depth study), medium (period study) and long (thematic study)
• on three geographical contexts: a locality (the historic environment); British; and European and / or wider world settings
and "British history must form a minimum of 40% of the assessed content over the full course."
Beyond that, it's up to the people making the exams.
I think this is great -- everyone should learn the techniques ("to investigate issues critically" etc) but the school, teacher and student have some flexibility in their learning. At university or in life, it hardly matters whether I focussed on Roman Britain or European WWII history to achieve this.
> There are multiple implementations of that standard, in the form of exams that meet the standards. The government checks the exams satisfy their standards.
In other countries, all students get the exact same exam.
Different exam boards is not the reason -- a single exam board can (and does) offer the flexibility of topic in areas the National Curriculum allows this, and sticks to what's prescribed elsewhere.
I think if you feel time is wasted for something like history, geography etc that people have uneven knowledge of, that's because they've failed to learn the techniques or fundamentals, and can only apply what they've learned to a single topic. There's little difference to everyone having to study WWII at GCSE, then only knowing what (not why) at A-level.
My experience was that even if all of the students prior to university studied maths A-Levels, we all studied different topics. Before those two year A-Levels, we all studied different topics in GCSEs. There is so much time wasted giving everyone the same knowledge because of how our system is set up with different exam boards.
I don't know if this is the case in other countries.