Why do you stay in school?

14 comments

1. Finals for us are at the very end of the year. The graduation ceremony is usually the very next day.

2. We didn’t. In my school the senior class, once they completed and passed their exams and knew they would graduate, was released from showing up for the last couple weeks or so.

   Sometimes if a student was on the border of passing a class, they would come back to complete some additional credit or something for a day or two at the teacher’s discretion.

3. Many public (funded by public tax money vs. open to the public) school districts in the US mandate a certain minimum number of class days even for seniors, and in my experience this also applies to Catholic diocesan guidelines. We mostly just played games until graduation day.

4. You mean pursuing higher education? Unless you go to a vocational school for grades 9-12, a lot of jobs require a bachelor’s degree or even higher. If you want to go into a specific trade, there are still requirements around certification/minimum training and that’s usually accomplished through trade schools.

   Either way, staying in school until the age of 16 is the bare minimum requirement by law but is not a good way to set yourself up for success later in life. Apprenticeship programs don’t really exist here, so at a minimum you need to get into some post high school education to even be considered for pretty much any job requiring any amount of specialty.

5. Most of the jobs that I would have been interested in doing long term that make a decent living required a bachelor degree or higher.

6. When I was a senior I was allowed to take AP exams in lieu of a final for all my courses except my art elective and religion (Catholic school). Those are in the first couple weeks of May, graduation wasn’t until June. So there was some time but not a ton. I still went to school because what else was I going to do, that’s where my friends were, and all my after school activities were as well.

7. I didn’t go to school for grades, but rather to learn things so I am not a mouth breathing halfwit.

8. We don’t have GCSEs. Each class usually has a final exam, usually held on the last day or last few days of class.

   Your graduation is dependent on your performance on those exams as well as meeting the attendance requirements of the school. Your university requests your final transcripts and failing your finals could affect your admission, especially a competitive university.

   Administration isn’t stupid, they’re not going to set up a school year with weeks of time with nothing for teenagers to do.

9. We don’t have an equivalent of the GCSEs. People only take their final exams for high school shortly before graduating. Nothing says you have to attend the ceremony, but most people want to. Some people drop out before graduating, but then they don’t have a high school diploma and struggle to wualify for a lot of jobs and basically all higher education.

10. Higher earning potential, getting the fuck out of my hometown/state, and college is fun

11. >once you know your graduating why do you stay at school

    You need to pass your classes to graduate. Final exams will usually only happen a week or two before graduation, and you’re not expected to attend during those weeks. You dont find out you’re graduating and then just sit around at school for no reason. You need to finish the school year and complete your classes in order to qualify for graduation, and classes dont wrap up until pretty close to graduation. At my high school, final exams ended about a week and a half before graduation and we just had that week and a half off.

12. It’s been a while but in my high school we had final exams the last week of school and you would only show up when you had an exam scheduled. If you had no exams left for the day you’d just leave and if you had no exams on a given day you’d just not go to school.

13. > once you know your graduating why do you stay at school

    Because you don’t “know” you’re graduating until the end. That’s why it’s the end. You can expect to graduate and have good grades, but the school can still fail you if you don’t meet the minimum attendance requirements, or if you don’t complete the coursework. Final exams conclude at the very end of the school year. Sometimes you can have finals on the last day of school.

    Why on earth would you have your big graduation exams before the END of the school year? That’s what makes no sense.

14. We do not have exit tests. Each class has a final that is a major part of if you pass that class and get credit for it. This includes classes you take as a Senior. Things are not finished for you until the last two weeks of Senior year. If you skip out early, most of the time you will not Graduate.