Also not British, but I think they talked about a "Sixth Form College" on one of the XX-Up Documentaries I watched recently - maybe 42-up? When some of the people who married young had teenagers. (42 up would have been filmed about 1996.) Some of the kids left school at 16, but the daughter one of the East End women was going to a Sixth Form College and had hopes of a University education. So my impression was a lot of schools stopped at 16 but if you wanted to go on to University you did a separate school for a year or two.

I'm familiar with it in a Canadian fashion, but I'm wondering how I managed to get through A-levels without realising there was a whole 'nother A-level granting institution outside of high school.

Yeah, we had girls who left after O levels because they were not going to university, but even the girls who left SHHS to do A levels somewhere else joined a school that had forms through fifth.

Sixth form colleges are pretty common in the UK now, but I'm under the impression they're a growing thing - in a world where teenagers are under pressure to stay in education or training for as long as possible, it can be a compromise for people who want to leave school, or for people who want A-levels outside the range of what schools can offer.

Thanks, Am Chau. I forget how much can change in twenty years. I left just before GCSE--my sister would have been one of the first years taking that, and so I don't even know how that altered the landscape.

I am very protective of my wee little O Levels. Our school was OCD when it came to test taking, and it was actually quite fun. My year was a big bunch of nerds, with more than a few of us taking O Levels on our own--I did Computer Science by myself, Tania did Hebrew, Nadia did Italian. And my Comp Sci O Level exam was scheduled for the same time as my Latin one, I guess because so few people were interested in both (especially Comp Sci--I remember zero from that, and it was one of my worst grades).

Ah, high school. Good times, good times. t /without sarcasm

'Sixth-form' colleges (not their official name anymore) are very common here. That's the sector I was teaching in, until I went back to studying. They're now more usually called further education colleges or post-16 colleges, and individual institutions are called -- College. Here are just a few examples I'm aware of from having worked in the sector. There are dozens in London alone.

This is different from the old tradition of exclusive private schools (like Eton and Cheltenham) having 'college' in their names. And it's different again from a newer practice of re-naming schools 'college' when they get a particular type of funding - so the local school here is called D-- Technology College, because it is funded to be a specialist technology academy. You see 'sports colleges' and 'science colleges' popping up everywhere now, but they're 11-18 secondary schools.

It's confusing for us - must be much more so for non-Brits.

One thing I noticed on Elementary. One particularly nasty character was an Arsenal fan,which apparently made him even worse. Can you explain the reference for non-Brits? What does being an Arsenal fan signify? Why is it especially appropriate for a brutal killer to be one?

The roles of the different football clubs is a bit hard to fathom, even for natives like me. Some clubs have more of a reputation for violence (e.g. Milwall), but I couldn't have sworn Arsenal were necessarily one of them.

Basically, the rule that any club which isn't yours is to be denigrated applies here as much as anywhere else. Maybe the writer supports Spurs or somebody.

Nick Hornby is an Arsenal supporter; I can highly recommend Fever Pitch as an introduction to all that this entails.

[Side note: ita, I know you're a Graham Norton connoisseur. I don't always watch, but last Friday's episode with Chris Pine and Benedict Cumberbatch was an absolute classic.]

Ooh, thanks, Fiona. I'm not going to lie--when I heard the lineup, I had a few moments of "there's an interesting pair--oh." Very curious now.

I figure they used Arsenal because Americans have heard of them? I mean, I think they have. In my day (you know) Chelsea was the oh-fuck-hooligans team. I had Saturday job in Chelsea, and there was one match scheduled that finished during shop hours and...all the shops locked their doors. We actually stood there stony-faced as passers-by tried to find stores to duck into, but I didn't even have keys.

I swear, I feared for my safety more often and more culturally in London than in Kingston (not upon Thames).