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the US school system is even complicated for american peoples because it depends from which State you are. They are many ways to call every grades.

The american school experience could start as a baby, when they go the the "day care". It is mainly intended for working parents, so they bring their children there and go to work. The day care takes care of the children but It's also a way to start earlier the childhood education.

Once a child is around three years old, he could start to go to the Preschool, as a preschooler. It's not required. The program can be five days or only a few days a week. Kindergarten is not mandatory, but in some states it is required. But some school districts offer Kindergarten, so there is that choice. Some programs are half-day programs, in morning or in afternoon and some are full-day programs. The first mandatory grade mandatory for everyone is elementary school, also called primary school or grade school. It is for the lower grades, from first grade to third grade or fifth, it depends the schools. Middle school is for the middle grades, depending of the school districts, it might have fourth through eighth or fifth through eighth grade. We can have some differences, but in general in the U.S, the high school is a four year program, it provides secondary education. There is the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade. It is also special ways to refer to every high school grade: 9th grade is also called “Freshmen year”, 10th grade is “Sophomore year”, 11th grade is “Junior year” and 12th grade is “Senior year”. When a one’s done with high school, it means that the kid graduates from high school. At the end of the senior year, you receive a high school diploma. Being graduated from High School is not required, it always depends from state to state. In general, in U.S, a child must attend school until he or she is 16 years old.

Overview of US regular school system

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After high school, a child might go to college ( or university), which provides higher education. It is a higher level of studies, and a lot of professions required a higher education. When a student is in college, it means that he or she attends either a college or a university. Both are a four year program, grades are called the same than in high school: Freshmen year, Sophomore year, Junior year, Senior year. These four years are also called “undergraduate school”. So when someone graduates from college, he or she gets a Bachelor in his or her college section, for example a Bachelor in sciences, in art, etc. After that, he or she can study further, and go to graduate school. He or she attend the “master’s degree”. The highest degree possible is after graduate school, the PhD. When someone gets a PhD, we can address this person as a “doctor”.

Until Primary school it is pretty the same, the only difference between the both education system is the organisation and kids’ age of the different grades. In Switzerland, a kid is done with primary school when he or she is around twelve years old and in U.S it is around 10 years old and 4th grade. Then it is the same, our Secondary school last three years and the middle school last also around three or four years. Then the most different is coming. In Switzerland, when you are around 15 years old, you are done with the legally mandatory school (Secondary school). But in U.S it is mandatory to go in high school. High school is a choice in Switzerland and also you have to go in PG in secondary school (how I explained it in the introduction) and in U.S. every student go in high school.

A big difference is also that in Switzerland students can’t choose their classes in secondary school neither in high school. They just have some options they can choose. But everyone in the class has the same math level, english and so on.

I think I prefer the idea to choose your level in each class, because you can be really good in English but not that good in math, so you can find for every class a way to be with people in your level. But I prefer the fact that you can choose to do studies or not, it means that students can choose to go in High school or try to learn a job.