In two English speaking non-USA countries:
Recess existed and was 20 minutes.
Lunch hour was 60 minutes.
Kindergarten was pure play.
There was morning assembly with the whole school in one big room. In one country, in a state school, there was religious song singing (though we changed all the words of course).
There was not much writing in early years.
Art, Music, PE existed.
There was a significant degree of tracking/streaming, where different ability groups were in different classrooms. The difference between the top and bottom levels by grade 10 would be the difference between grade 12 and grade 8. Your report card explicitly said what level you were in. (There was no such thing as in-class differentiation. I can't imagine how that could really work.)
In later grades there was a single statewide exam for each subject. It counted for 2/3 of the total (and the internal grade from the school was adjusted to statistically match the external scores, so schools could not inflate grades).
Bullying was tolerated. Reporting bullying was not.
There were prefects.
There was corporal punishment.
ETA: There was no homework until, hmmm, actually we never really had homework, except maybe larger projects.
Last edited by 22B; 09/30/13 01:03 PM.
