I go back to school on Friday, and I'm genuinely excited for some reason. We'll see how long that lasts.

As a new year, new classes and new people gives a lot of stuff to write chapters about, there's a good chance it will all get very confusing. If you've read the whole book so far you've probably also been slightly confused about the school chapters, so inspired by Bane-Of-Olympus I'm going to explain the Northern Ireland education system.

This is for Northern Ireland only, as for some unknown reason England, NI, Scotland and Wales all have different education systems. Even within NI there is some variation, so this is a very specific chapter that probably won't help you anywhere else.

To start with - you're 3, maybe 4 if you have a summer birthday (July or August). You enter into this fun place called playgroup or nursery or reception. You play for 3 hours, maybe learn to write your name, and listen to a story. You do this 5 days a week for a year (1st September to 30th June) and then your first year of education is over.

Then you go to primary school. You have a snazzy uniform, and you're now 4 or 5. The first year is called P1, stands for 1st year of Primary school. Then you're P2, P3 etc all the way up to P7. In P6 you start preparing for an exam called the Transfer test or 11+, and it's basically an entrance exam into grammar school. You don't have to take it, in some areas the test doesn't exist. If you do take it, it's in November of P7. After the long marking and schools applications, you leave primary school at 11 years old, ready to go to a new school.

Then you change to secondary school. There's lots of different types, grammar school, high school, academy and college. Don't be fooled, they're all different names for basically the same thing. You start there at 11, with a uniform that's far too big. Everyone is tall and scary, the school is massive and the rules are stricter. The first year is called Year 8, but no one calls it that except for the teachers. You may have seen me call different years first year, second year etc.

It gets complicated here. For the sake of simplicity and sanity I'm only explaining how it works in my area, because there's maybe 3 or 4 different systems.

You do years 8 to 10, or first to third year. By the end of third year you're 14 and will have chosen your GCSEs. You'll have dropped a few subjects and maybe taken up a few new ones. You have to do English, Maths and some form of science. Even the science options and the subjects available at GCSE differ from school to school.

GCSEs are the name of the public state exams you take at the end of fifth year/Year 12/you're 16. It stands for General Certificate of Secondary Education.

At my school you do between 8 and 10 GCSEs. Which is all fine, but at other schools you can do 12 or 13, and 12 or 13 GCSEs looks better on university application forms.

Science - there are 3 science GCSE options (at my school anyway)

Double award - all 3 sciences (chemistry, biology, physics) but slightly less content, counts for 2 grades

Triple award - 3 sciences, full content, 3 grades. Better for doing medicine or being a vet.

Double pick - 2 sciences (drop one), full content, 2 grades

The science option you choose determines how many other subjects you can pick. If you do Triple, you get to pick 3 other subjects, and for Double award/pick you can choose 4 subjects.

If you're not bored/confused enough, then there's the optional subjects of English Literature and Advanced Maths. You can do one, both or neither. English Literature is pretty much what it says on the tin, you study books and poems. If you do Ad maths, you do your Maths GCSE in 4th year (a year early) and then do Further Maths in 5th year.

My choices were -

English
Maths
English Lit
Ad Maths
Double Award science (all 3, less content)
Music
French
History
Business studies

Total - 10

I'll be studying these for 2 years, and if I pass them (minimum 5 for most schools) I go to 6th form for another 2 years and do A Levels, which is normally 3 or 4 subjects. I do those exams when I'm 18 (or at the end of Year 14) and hopefully get into university, which is a bit far into the future for now.

GCSEs are graded from A* to U. A* is  difficult to get. A*, A, B and C are passes, but recently a C* grade was added to show 'strong' and 'weak' passes. Yeah, I don't get it either. If you get D, E, F, G or U (for Ungradable - so bad they couldn't even give it a G) you fail.

Basically I'm going into Year 11 (nearly 15!) and starting my GCSEs. This chapter is 850 words, so if you have any other questions please comment and I'll try my best to explain the confusion.

Bye :)