School Exams! British VS American | Evan Edinger & Jack Edwards 

Dang y'all are absolutely living for this video! Thanks for all the interest and support! I'm gonna be filming a video with my token Scottish friend to clear some things up for the angry Scots in the comments and I just invested in an overhead camera rig to film myself taking... a past GCSE paper! Hope you're surviving exam "season:"!

American tests are literally a Kahoot quiz edit: to all the Americans explaining the nuances of their education system, you'd think such 'vigorous' institutions would also teach you how to take a joke

doing my gcses now and hearing that Americans have basically all multiple choice is making me tear up

"We use pens." "How are they graded?" "...with another pen????" I DIED 😂😂😂

In the UK, SATs are supposed to test how well the school is teaching you. By definition they are of zero use to students, but schools' reputations depend on them so they make them seem more important than they really are.

America: We get cheat sheets. U.K: NO LABELS ON BOTTLES

Legit I swear if a Brit took an exam in America, they’d be treated as a damn genius

Americans: These exams are killing me Americans: *Sees Britain. * British: You were saying?

Hearing that the US don't have to write essays in ENGLISH was actually mind boggling. Literally finished my gcses yesterday and I can't describe to you the pain i went through with English lit and lang

UK english: analyse word by word, using terminology, structure, plan your answer and include AO1, 2 and 3. also remember 100000 quotes US english: colour a bubble

wait lemme get this straight for english americans have multiple choice while we have to learn 15 poems 2 plays and a novel without a cheat sheet🤦🏽‍♂️

Americans: does exam for maths and English Me (uk): does exam for English literature, English language, maths paper 1, maths calculator paper 1, maths calculator paper 2, chemistry,biology,physics,music performance,composition and written, drama performance,coursework and written, art final outcome and a b tec sport exam. Sis bye-

I feel cheated with GCSEs. I’m doing 10 subjects with up to 5 exams in each. If there’s any Americans here, let me explain ONE of my subjects: -21 poems to learn, learn all context, background, annotations, and 2 essays on any random ones and some poems we have never seen. We don’t even get the “cheat thing”?? -Macbeth, learn all of the important lines, annotations etc, essay question on any random part of it -Same thing for an inspector calls -Same thing for A Christmas Carol No multiple choice, all 12-40 mark essay questions. -write a letter -write a story And then add all of the other subjects. I’m in pain 😀

Dont forget the fact that in England you passing depends on how every other person in the country does.🙄

Learning that a “cheat sheet” is a thing is actually disturbing.

No one: GCSE exam women: I CaNt TeLL yOu the AnSwER bUt I CaN rEaD tHe QuEsTiOn Ok? .. oK *continues to spit everywhere and not read to you like your 2*

It sounds like american education values complete accuracy and memorisation of the content taught, whereas uk seems to put more emphasis on demonstrating an ability to think around the subject

America: Exams UK: you mean year 7 quiz?

“No we use pens” “How are they graded” * awkward silence * “... with another pen?”

This is by far your best British vs American, because Jack's sarcastic, confused responses are just BRILLIANT. You should film more with him once allowed.

Jack: Oh you guys get assessed along the way? Like every piece of work counts? Omg wow I can't imagine that. GCSE students 2020/2021: heheheh

The UK be like: So memorise these 15 poems, quotes from a 19th century book, a 20th century book, Shakespeare's Macbeth, 30 or so science and maths equations, these 5 or so German paragraphs on useless topics like marriage in four different tenses, learn the whole timeline of the cold war, 20th century America, the development of medicine from 1000 AD to the present day, the Elizabethan era, about 100 Italian musical terms about structure, melody, rhythm, tonality, intervals, keys, ornaments, whatever else, arguments for the existence of God, and the different views of people on creation and whatever, learn useless calculations that really shouln't need to be taught unless you're doing further maths, and also, we'll give you loads of pointless homework that keeps you up until 2:00 in the morning but then tell you off for sleeping in and not being on time for school, and we'll give you loads of tests that you have to do loads of revision on, so you can lose even more sleep and your social lives, having breakdowns most weeks, because the tests you take at the end of the year define a large amount of your future, and if you fail them, you've completely failed he whole subject, and even passing doesn't guarantee you a place in sixth form or university. But remember to get plenty of sleep and exercise and social time with your friends and look after your mental health xxx

I was always so confused why American high school dramas showed kids never studying but getting good marks, but now it makes more sense lol.

Are other countries sitting back scratching their heads? We are over here in the U.S.A taking tests with cheat sheets and we spend an inordinate amount of time in school doing ...well , pep rallies, painting ourselves up for spirit week, getting excused absences so we can go to cheerleading competitions and planning for prom. Meanwhile, everyone else in the world is buckling down. But every year its like "And the Nobel prize goes to..oh ....another American." Is everyone else like HOW!!!!????

When americans see our grade boundaries like “70+ is an A” not knowing they change depending on have my people did well so if more people the did well the higher the grade boundaries and if less people did well they’ll lower it. IT ISNT A FIXED NUMBER.

YOU"RE TELLING ME that I had to memorise quotes, characters, important events, structure, etc. of a book, with no cheat sheet and you guys just have MULTIPLE CHOICE ANSWERS

The fact that American students still complain about how hard Highschool is has me miffed

Me a German sitting here like: what is a gcse ? Wha- 👁👄👁 And i feel we and the Brits(?) are similar because in the end we‘re all alcoholics by the age of 15 And praying to god that exams will end. 🤠

Fun fact - The reason we have to use black pens for exams in the UK is because blue in won't always show up when a paper is photocopied. Really envying all those multiple choice tests in the states though! Any one know what exams are like in Canada? Are they more similar to the UK or the US?

american kids: "omg exams r so hard" british education system: *"let me introduce myself"*

UK: *three years of never leaving the house or socialising or hAviNg a cHiLdhOoD, learning how to write university-level essays and working out maths equations that shouldn't exist and having a mental breakdown every other week, no guarantee of getting into university* US: *studies five minutes for multiple choice questions well done you're in college now*

For nearly all exams in Denmark you are allowed to bring everything, notes, books, your PC, the internet. When is a "closed book" exam (no aids) ever gonna help you other than for trivia at the dining table.

"you only take 3 or 4 at max" *looks at my 11 AP tests* that was probably a bad idea

*school shooter is mentioned* “This is the UK that’s not an option”

UK exams are brutal. Before your GCSEs it is a straight month of hibernation when you are revising

I think you should also do an updated version of this with the 9-1 spec, and see how many exams the average GCSE student needs to take

Just to add a side note here; Something that was missed is in the UK in secondary schools mainly; there is general assessments that would take place after big topics to view your progress in each subjects, which would be done throughout the school year and then an assessment at the end of the year for each subject again to show you have understood everything but also to see what sets you would be put into when you went up into your next year. So from year 7-10 that would happen. But obviously year 11,12,13 will have bigger exams which goes towards more and mean more as this helps you get jobs and be able to go too University. However there are different paths for example, What I am doing which is BTEC which I started after year 11 (You obviously have to complete GCSEs though; which I did. They are mandatory) where I started my first year of BTEC which was a Level 2 in travel and tourism which is a little step back before going foward again from an academic point of view. I have DONE a Level 2 in Travel and tourism which is 1 year and NOW I am doing a level 3 in Travel and Tourism which is 2 years; year 1 being just the diploma for basic level 3 then the year 2 being the extended diploma which at the end will mean you have equivalent to four A levels. So BTECs is just more off a specific education that will be set too one industry/job type which for me was Travel and Tourism as a whole industry which in basic means it will cover everything in Travel and tourism.

My mate studied Romeo and Juliet for 3 years then wrote about Macbeth in the exam

not trying to sound controversial but American "tests" sound sooo much easier than the 30 exams I would have had to sit

oh god this is kinda scaring me now lol I was looking into studying to be a vet in the UK (I'm from US), but like all those essays, tests, standards, etc....idk if i'm prepared

As a Durham alumnus I want to wish Jack all the best if he's still suffering with exams .... This video was amazing. It has literally transformed every American education reference I never understood growing up ... multiple choice English tests blew my mind! Thank you!

US high school sounds like a dream Multiple choice ENGLISH Cheat sheets Own clothes Like 3 exams???

evan: "when the school shooter comes i-" me: "wAIT WHAT"

I'm 50 so it's been 30+ years since I went to school. I remember in primary school we sat with our desks in a horseshoe shape. Half way through primary 3 (8 years old) the teacher took each child individually and did a memory test, none of the pupils knew about this test beforehand. The next day the pupils were told to move their desks to create groups. Unbeknown to me at the time I was part of the second to last group. Over time I realised that my friends, who were in different groups from me, where performing different work from me and getting more time with the teacher. It was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to move up a group because the teachers weren't sure if you would be capable of performing more challenging work, even if you had proved yourself proficient in the work you were doing within your group. The pupils in the higher groups had a distinct advantage going into high school. At high school we were again in a combined class, I sat beside my friend who I hadn't sat beside since I was eight. The pupils were given the same class work but the pupils who had been in the lower groups at primary school found the classwork difficult because we had never been challenged where as the pupils in the higher groups found the work very easy. Towards the end of the first year the pupils were again separated into academic abilties. Unsurprisingly the pupils in the lower groups at primary school went into remedial class and the pupils who were part of the higher groups attended advanced class. My friends who were in advanced high school classes left school with good qualifications and confidence but unfortuantly the remedial class pupils did not. My whole life I've felt like school failed me, not that I failed school, all because the teachers took no interest in me since I failed a memory test at 8 years old. I really hope the school system has changed in the last 30 years.

I’m from the US and had a completely different experience, we never really go cheat sheets and the majority of in class tests were open answer. I did do the IB dimploma which might have affected my experience though

MULTIPLE CHOICE?! NO INVIGILATORS?! CHEAT SHEETSSS?!?! WTF Im moving to America now...

i had to memorize people's names, geographical places, dates of events and america had MULTIPLE CHOICE ANSWERS? bruh

GCSE History includes 4 periods of time in history (each multiple decades long) that each have a 1 hour essay style exam. All for a single grade.

I'm Irish and our school system is soooo different. We have standardised tests every year from 1st/2nd class to 6th class, and then in secondary school you have Christmas tests/week 10s, end of year tests, class tests, and sometimes midterms. and if you are in an exam year (leaving cert/ 6th year or junior cert/ 3rd year) you have your mocks, which are practise exams in January/ February. we also have CBA's (which are new, they were only brought into effect with this years 3rd years). CBA's, or classroom-based-assessments are just projects that you have a set amount of time to work on 9 it depends, anywhere from 4-8 weeks is standard.) So yeah, Irish school is fun.

*British exam hall* School shooter: *enters* Pupil: Wrong country, mate! Teacher: YOU ARE UNDER EXAM CONDITIONS! NO TALKING!

From what I gathered in this video a brain surgeon in America could only have the qualifications for a post man in the UK 😂😂

It’s so crazy to me (German) that you have to pay for your tests it’s just such a wild thought to me. And in all my school time I did not have any multiple choice test, only now in Uni we have some. And cheat sheets were never a thing here, only in your Abitur which is the last big exam at the end of 12th grade you get a standardized cheat sheet for maths

The point about coursework being just as much a part of your final grade as exams is very accurate. I remember I was on track to hopefully get a B in my final maths grade, but because my teacher lost one of my final courseworks but never told me and claimed that I was the one who never handed it in afterwards(yeah)... I went down to a D as a final grade. I wasn’t great at Maths in the first place, but I’m still quite pissed about it even to this day.

WAIT AMERICANS DON'T HAVE OLD MEN WALKING AROUND THE EXAM ROOM STARING AT YOU SUSPICIOUSLY?

imagine if he mentioned the 10 hour art GCSE or the 15 hour A level art exam lol

All British teachers ever said was to always be in a single filled line and it is actually so frustrating

I'm in the uk and we have 6 sets of exams a year (one is end of years) to assess whether we do well in topics. But I go to a grammar school so it's very focused on academics and a lot of the normal state schools dont do that.

The basic UK C grade student could probably be the smartest person in an American school

Shows why mental health issues in teens in the UK is so bad, it doesn't have to be the way it is, but for some reason the government feels like it does

Evan thinks 50%, 30% and 20% at university is scary, Germany be like: the final exam is 100%

honestly think i get stressed just hearing the word “exam”

Finally getting some credit for all the hard work we do in England 😂☹️

As if the GCSEs weren’t already hard enough... the government decided to bring out the 1-9 system

I’m from Missouri and we almost never were allowed to use a cheat sheet. If you had one, it was usually a 4” x 6” index card.

The SATs we do in England are normally taken in the equivalent of 5th grade and for Comprehensive school students, it is generally used to put them in academic sets but for us students in in grammar schools, they basically don't matter; for Grammar school students they are just a formality. They are also only taken by state (public) school students; private school kids have their own internal tests.

Multiple choice????? I had to create a story in 35 minutes today

I swear a British person would do soooooo well in America !

In Zambia, being a former British colony, the exams are pretty similar. We have two papers mostly for each subject exam. The first one is multiple choice and the second could comprise essays, one word answers or short sentence answers. That's for the junior secondary leaving exams and the final High school exams.

At my public high school in America there were tons of people that didn’t care and if you did you had it kind of hard. Not all my test were multiple choice and I had like 4 finals on the same day . Also they changed the grading for SATs the year I took it. Majority of my AP classes had no multiple choice questions .It was all written even quizzes. Rarely if ever did we have a cheat sheet. I had quizzes at the beginning of the week and a test at the end of it. Some snobbish teachers gave 2 question quizzes so if you got one wrong you failed this was also a written test with no cheat sheet .

To top it off, we're NOT ALLOWED THE BOOKS ANYMORE FOR ENGLISH. Had to memorise 15 poems and quotes from 3 novels in one night...Hell still got an 8 tho so its all good

Americans: we have a cheat sheet English: cries internally

omg how have i just found this now! im English and did the typical exam route and then i went to uni. However, as part of my uk university BA degree i actually went to the States to study for a while. Big up LSU Geaux Tigers!!!! However, i actually found the multiple choice question tests i had to do in the USA much more difficult than the essay type exam questions i was used to. I am so used to analysing and basically talking shit and waffling on, i really did find it difficult to answer multiple choice. However i did get the highest mark in the "Rural Crime in Louisiana" class thanks to it being an essay based exam (that they very kindly gave us a week before the test)- it was like christmas had come early considering we never get to see the exam questions in the uk. :)

I was just exploring this guy's channel and was absolutely whammed when I saw Jack Edwards in it. Looking so fresh before covid

"75% is multiple choice" "But-" "Even in English" "???????????????????????" Holy shit

This is giving me flashbacks, I remember specially in maths (they did this for science too) you'd have to write down how u came to the answer u chose and sometimes if u didn’t write them down u'd either just get 1 point for that question or none at all.

"you could theoretically get the lowest mark in your homework and then get the highest mark in your final grade" I did this for my sociology A level lmao. I didn't hand in a SINGLE piece of homework for 2 years. Teacher told me and my parents I might fail. I got an A and went on to study social science at university. Homework doesn't mean shit except staying out of detention.

Uk English: in a 4 page essay, explain and describe how the mood and atmosphere is presented throughout the novel Us English : colour in

"that just sounds like your constantly studying" ... Isn't that what school is?

American testing system: gradually throughout high school, only really focuses on core subjects --- Total: multiple quizzes but no big exam period at the end What’s going to happen to me next year: 2 English literature and 2 English language papers + 2 pieces of coursework; 2 Maths calculator papers + 1 non-calculator paper; 2 tests for each science (so 6 in total); spanish listening, speaking, reading and writing; 2 history papers; drama devised and scripted performances + a written play analysis; 2 music performances, 2 compositions and 1 analysis. --- Total: 2+2+2+1+6+4+2+3+2+1 = 25 exams at the end of Year 11 + the 2 pieces of English coursework + the 2 compositions (more coursework) = 29 assessed pieces (when I’m 16 😢) And THEN there’s A-Levels to worry about People wonder why British people are miserable and sarcastic but then you look at school and think, ‘oh yeah’ PS: please pardon my grammar I’m too tired to care rn

I love watching this and comparing this to my experience in Australia

75% multiple choice??? I’m moving to America wtf- edit: MULTIPLE CHOICE ENGLISH EXAMS I- KDNEKAMDBEKSK

Brits: so we have to read the whole book , learn all the quotes for any possible question we might get , and write a 7-9 page essay and repeat for two books and a Shakespeare play. Americans: wait you had to read a book

Here in Germany, the education system differs between the states (which is quite unfair tbh, because at the end the certificates are considered to be equal)...A student in Northern Germany only has to take 2 AP classes & a few courses (which are more likely to be easier), instead of that here in the Southern part we had to take 5 APs + 7 extra courses + seminar etc. & the difficulty level ist higher.

I also did my GCSE’s with A-level students, so it was basically a gym full of y11 and sixth formers and we had never done this kind of exam before since all the others were in our classrooms.

15:07 "Do you guys have to use no. 2 pencils on everything?" "No we use pens" "Then how are they...graded?" "...?" "....?" "With another pen?"

EVAN YOU SHOULD DO A VIDEO WHERE YOU TRY A GCSE PAPER there are past papers online for most subjects edit: thanks for the likes :) i have never gotten this many before 😂😂 EDIT 2: I KNOW EVAN POSTED THAT HE IS DOING THIS, so ya

In Canada They had us do these Cat4 exams (Canadian Achievement Test). I did them twice over the course of my time in the system. They did them to test weather or not the curriculum was doing its job at teaching us to read, write, math and a few science sections and it basically was met to root out who was above average, who was average and who was below average.

This has really helped me with my comparative essay for my university course. It's due tomorrow and I haven't had a class in this module in a month. Thank you lmoa

💀💀💀A CHEAT SHEET?!?!? WE’RE NOT EVEN ALLOWED THR BOOKS ANYMORE 😭😭😭

Evan: “Wow you have an exam on a book” Jack: ... Jack: ... Jack: ... Jack: um Jack: ... Jack: that is my whole degree

Just came out of this year’s (2022) GCSE exams and I’ll update the rough amount of exams based on certain GCSE publishers (mainly AQA and Edexcel) Maths: 1 non calculator + 2 calculator English literature: 3 English language: 2 Biology: 2 Chemistry: 2 Physics: 2 You then choose a humanity subject (geography or history); 3 for each subject A language is heavily encouraged with different schools varying in availability but generally it’ll be Spanish or French; 1 speaking exam + 2 written You have an additional 2 option courses (eg drama, art, design and technology, economics etc) that will vary in every school. Most of these will have 2 exams to do but more creative and artsy ones may have portfolio work compiled from your last 2 years of GCSE and possibly won’t include a written exam at all Personally speaking, I had 19 cause I swapped a language for art but ik others who had up to 24

SATs in the uk are used as a measurement for the teacher’s teaching ability, the reason the teachers push you so much for them, it will most likely not affect the secondary school you’re going to unless you are second appealing for a grammar school in either kent or Buckinghamshire. They test comprehesion, maths and SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) and each subject is scored out of 120, not out of 5. The 11 plus on the other hand is a test you can take in either kent or bucks and iff you get 121 or higher (roughly 1/3 to 1/4 of people pass), you can apply to a grammar school which will have better teaching staff and far fewer delinquents for better learning experience.

Us kids : YH OUR TEST IS 75% MULTIPLE CHOICE UK set 8 kid : Hold my last Brain cell🥴

As a Brit about to do GCSE's I am more than offended

Yeah I can't stress this enough, it's usually a hobby and point of pride for many British people to make their teachers cry in and/or leave the classroom ... being working class in Britain means you're fluent in sarcasm and irony before you're double digits and if you don't have a thick skin living here.. well people have actually killed themselves over taking comments too seriously ... though that could be because some kids do go too far with their jokes because they haven't learned boundaries

Yeah, I'm American and I've always had much harder exams in my classes; I'm genuinely surprised that some people go through school with cheat sheets at every exam

I moved to the US when I was 15. I went from failing maths in the UK to being a Mathathalete and competing for my US school against other kids

aSsEmBliEs Jack: “the ones about sexual assault weren’t too fun” Evan: “ours were about rainforests”

Watching this I realized my high school was a lot like the British educational system 😂 we had three or four exams a year per class. We did have the multiple choice but it was more of writing out and stuff like that. Sometimes even if it was multiple choice we had to write out explanations and stuff.

I did my GCSEs last year and am now doing my A-levels. For my exams, it was a little different so we did exams for 6-7 weeks (and for most of that I had at least one exam a day and then they also counted (slightly) our mocks from 6 months before, which were before our exams were even cancelled. It was so frustrating because so many people assumed that because they were 'cancelled' that we weren't doing exams. I'm sure, based on my mocks that were actually more realistic, that I would've done better if they were more real.