All together now:

The Pellet with the Poison's....

Oh dear. Well, hope today is a better day!

...meanwhile, last night I was the victim of domestic violence.

From my cat.

Yes, I have a cut and the beginnings of a (very small) black eye as a result of the cat deciding, at 2.30am, that it would be a great idea to stab me in the face. I mean, okay, maybe I was snoring - but he occasionally craps on rugs, and I still don't stab him in the face.

Another inch and he'd have had my frigging eye.

Needless to say, the cat spent the night in the bathroom. And he clearly realised it was merited, because rather than the customary caterwauling of unfairly imprisoned moggy one expects at such times, there were merely a few sorrowful and plaintive little mews.

I got beaten up by a cat.

I think we just established who is the pussy Chez Jay.

I've got a somewhat random question about the British school system. This article [link] refers to a school as a "state primary," but it's a religious school. What does "state primary" mean?

Well, we do have state schools that are religious schools - my wee sister, for example, went to a Catholic primary school (despite the fact that my family are, if anything, atheists from a vaguely protestant background, and my wee sister hasn't been christened and used to argue with the nuns about doctrine) and iirc it wasn't private, it was a state school. My parents chose it because it was one of the best schools in the area - due in no small part to the whole community-thing that was part and parcel of being a faith school.

...of course, I may be on crack. I've not taught in the UK and my personal experience didn't involve faith schools. But I think that we have state-funded faith schools of several religious flavours. Whether we should have is a whole other question, but I'm fairly sure that not all Faith schools are private. Um.

...I'll double check this over on TES in a bit, if you like. (Got my Drama club coming in in a minute or two.)

'Primary' refers to the level of education-- primary schools run from years 1 to 6, that is, from ages 5 to 11 or thereabouts, while secondary schools run from years 7 to 11 (or 13 if they include A-level students), that is, ages 11 to 16 (or 18).

'State' indicates that it's funded by the state-- usually supplemented by whatever it can get from the community, and religious schools often do better than secular ones in that regard. Although some British religious schools are public schools (that is, private, as in you have to pay), most are state schools. Compare, for example, this article from a couple of years ago on a Roman Catholic state primary.

ETA: British education cross-post!

A British friend of mine was talking about her primary school, which was Jewish and featured lots of instruction in Hebrew, et cetera. Nowadays, the population of the area having changed, the student body is like 50% Moslem.

Ah. Thanks. Interesting. I guess I'd kind of assumed that religious schools there were run like religious schools here, totally separate from the state-run schools.

Are there ever any sort of conflicts between state curriculum requirements and the religious teachings of the school? Like, when I was in high school, it was a New Jersey education requirement that health class had to include lessons on various forms of birth control, how they worked and how to use them and stuff like that. I'm sure the Catholic schools didn't teach that, but they didn't have to, since they were private.

Or, there are some Christian high schools in the US that don't teach evolution, but pretty much every state requires that the public high schools teach it. (Well, Kansas keeps wavering on that, and Georgia requires that the textbooks have a sticker on the front saying that evolution is a theory, not a fact, and that the material should be approached with an open mind, or something like that. But most states are still teaching actual science.)

Back in the neolithic days when I was in school in the UK...well, the requirements of a school were to prepare its students to take what are now GCSR exams. When I took them, they were O and A and S level exams, and there were many different boards with each having their own syllabi.

If I didn't take an O level in anything religious, I never got the idea that the government cared what I was taught--Fay, Am-Chau--is that a correct impression?

Hil, remember that in the UK we still have an established church-- the Queen is the head of Church as well as State, and Bishops sit in the House of Lords. Most religious state schools are Church of England, with Roman Catholic second and a scattering of Jewish and Muslim places. The concept of church-state division is not really recognised here, at least in the structure of the system.

We now have the National Curriculum which lays down what state schools have to teach in key subjects-- which I think means only science, maths, and English. (For example, the religious education programme is "non-statutory"; it's also possible for parents to take thier children out of RE lessons.) The various exam boards do have different requirements, but they all fall within the demands of the National Cirriculum, as I understand it. I believe all UK state schools teach evolution (and my father is a science teacher in a C of E secondary school, so I think I'd have heard if they'd stopped).