Years at St. Clare's

[auscatherine]

I have been puzzled anew re-reading the Twins at St Clares by the fact that it says in the first book that the youngest girls at the school (including the twins when they start) are 14 and the oldest ones 18, yet the twins go into Form 1 (which in Australia would start at 12yo before we started calling it Year 7) and then stay at the school for 6 years. How does this work? Perhaps Blyton didn't expect it to go on for so many years when she wrote the first book? Are there any age references in the other books so you can get an idea as to whether they go up a year in age with each new form and particularly how old they are in the last book? This always used to bother me when I read these books as a child as well.

[manzanita]

I don't know as to ages, but St Clares and MT both struck me as being the sort of school where you could be advanced or put back a year easily if needs be. Whereas in my reality, you weren't. You were kept in your year and sorted from there. A talented 11 year old would not go in with the 16 year olds for example.

That doesn't explain EB's logic come to think of it does it?!

[auscatherine]

No, not really but thanks for trying!

[hope189]

I think EB's logic was to adjust things to suit the circumstances. If everything in the books was realistic, the books wouldn't be half as good.

[Yak]

Why not? I don't think it would hurt the school books, at least, if they were realistic.

Most of the first formers at both SC and MT spent two years in their first year there. So how does that work exactly? If noone went up to the second year one year, but the second years DID go to the third year, did the second year spend a year empty?

[auscatherine]

If everything in the books was realistic, the books wouldn't be half as good.

I don't mind lack of realism at all, Hope. It is the lack of logic/internal consistency that bothers me.

Glad to see you are as perplexed as me, Yak!

[hope189]

Why not? I don't think it would hurt the school books, at least, if they were realistic.

But it would hurt the adventure/mystery books.

[Yak]

Those, perhaps, but then even they have to conform to certain rules that some other EB books (the Faraway series, for instance) do not have to. You couldn't just have a bunch of elves or pixies appearing in the middle of an Adventure book, for instance . Nothing happens in any of them that is IMPOSSIBLE.

That said, of course it's not technically impossible for a British girl's boarding school to keep girls in the First Year for two years and then only one year in each subsequent year but nonetheless, it's pretty impractical. Like I said, if you've got a year where noone moves up at all, one form is always going to be empty.

[auscatherine]

Actually Yak, in your scenario, wouldn't they be at school for even longer than 14-18yo? I think the six forms things only works if they are completing a form in less than a year. Is this possible, does anyone know, eg, were 5th and 6th form only half a year each in those days?

[Lenoir]

I like the idea of a form being empty for a year.
I don't know about St Clares, but in the Malory Towers series Alicia was already in first term when Darrell arrived, but they ended up leaving the sixth form at the same time. How many terms in a year? If it was three, then it seems that some girls spent 4 terms in a form, but maybe not a whole 2 years?
Also, by the time Darrell was leaving, Felicity was only in the second form, although she started when Darrell was in fourth.
Then some girls stayed down in the fifth like Moira: it seems they went up at their own pace. Bit confusing, but then I don’t know how the system works.

[manzanita]

I guess really Enid just didn't think it through is the real answer and unless we employ the services of a psychic, we'll never know why she didn't think it through! As I posted earlier, SC and MT seem to be the sort of schools where pupils can be held back or advanced as needs be. In my experience, that isn't what happens in English schools but then, I never went to a private school and to be cynical, there are financial advantages for Miss Theobald to be able to make girls repeat a grade [/cynicism].

Being held back a year is something I associate with US schools from shows like "Saved By The Bell" etc.

However, when I was at school, what may have been illnesses that required a long time off weren't really around. We had chicken pox etc, but nothing that required weeks and weeks off. If I am right, Felicity is in quarantine for a while, so perhaps it was better she starts out of sequence and has to play catch uprather than loses a year on her educational peers and is a year (form, grade etc ) behind. I know that's an MT example but I haven't read SC since I was a child!

[Daisy]

My sister repeated a year in the grammar school in the '50s, so it did happen sometimes. Boarding schools seem more prone to this - in fiction - at least, for it seems to be taken for granted that when a girl achieved a certain standard she would "get her remove". This occurred quite often in the Chalet books. The MT and SC books have instances of this but it doesn't seem quite so frequent as in some others I have read.

[Yak]

It mentions that Darrell spent four terms in the first form so Alicia and co must have spent two full years!

Also, what's the Lower Fifth/Upper fifth thing that gets a brief mention in one of the books and not the others? And Darrell was head of the Upper Fourth .. was there a lower fourth?

[Ming]

I assumed there were four terms a year (which contradicts with Alicia though), with the first two terms being "Lower" and the next two being "Upper". Which really doesn't make any sense at all.

[Yak]

No - I am reasonably sure that there were only three (someone correct me if I am wrong) ... winter, Spring and summer terms .

I remember in Second Form of St Clare's, talking about Anna and Elsie, Carlotta remarks 'I should be ashamed to spend more than a year in any form' ... evidently overlooking the fact that most of her classmates spent about a decade in the First Form *grins*