The Teknianian Education System

The Teknianian education system has, in recent years, flourished under the guidance and immense funding of the Department of Education, which has massively upgraded the resources and quality of the system with the 5.292 trillion tp that flow into it every year, or 21.6% of Tekniania’s yearly budget. The Department of Education is divided into 5 Bureaus, each responsible for a different level of education. The Bureaus are: Bureau of Kindergarten Education (ages 2-6), Bureau of Primary Education (ages 6-9), Bureau of Secondary Education (ages 9-15), Bureau of Tertiary Education (ages 15-18) and the Bureau of Higher Education (all other ages).

Each of these oversees their own schools and picks their own specialists and operates with great autonomy, with great liberties on what they can introduce into places of education, and only have some general rules: education must be based in peer-reviewed science, it must provide for the basic needs of any Teknianian, education cannot be discriminatory.

To house the extensive education programmes, large construction projects have been going on for the last 20 years and are now nearly finished. These projects include building entirely new schools, renovating older schools and adapting them to meet modern standards and building kindergartens on all islands. Most school buildings now have small parks, large classrooms with new furniture, the newest technology and world-class science labs.

On smaller islands, especially the Outer Islands, which may not be able to house schools for all required levels of education, they have several options on how to approach education. The first is to organise their education in conjunction with nearby islands, for example, to have a primary school on island A while the secondary school is on island B, while arranging free ferry services between these every morning and evening.

Another one, and this is especially popular with small islands near major islands, is to simply send all their pupils to a major island that has several schools.

The third, and most unpopular, only used when an island is incredibly far away from any other islands, is to simply send all their pupils to boarding schools on major islands.

The kindergarten level is the first of the mandatory levels, with all Teknianian children required to attend the last 2 years, while the first 2 are not compulsory. The kindergarten level focuses on preparing children for school and introducing them to skills that they will need there, while also introducing them to the basics of life, such as how to handle money and act in various crisis situations. The result of this is that most Teknianians, by the time they enter primary school, can read and do basic mathematics.

Primary school begins properly preparing young Teknianians for life, where some of the more unique subjects of the Teknianian education begin. Primary schools, while not on every island, are found on almost all of them, and each employs around 30 staff members, though bigger primary schools may have a much larger staff. Each primary school tries to teach by exploration, by letting children’s curiosity lead them with questions, which can then be answered by teachers.

Before beginning secondary school, all young Teknianians go through a week of career counselling to decide what classes they’re going to take. There are a wide variety of subjects available, each focusing on, for example, a different science or different form of art. Every year, pupils may choose different classes to work out what they want to do in life and what they enjoy. There are some mandatory classes, but there aren’t many of these.

Tekniania doesn't believe in sorting pupils by age, instead choosing to group them by ability. Let us consider a pupil who has chosen to take Linguistics. Once he has chosen it, he must do a test to determine his abilities in Linguistics. If he scores under a certain percentage and the subject has many applicants, more than there are spots in the classroom, he is rejected. The percentage varies depending on how many applicants there are. Over 10% and he is sorted based on how big a percentage of the questions he got correct. Those who scored high go into one level and those who scored low go into another, so students learn at their level. These tests are repeated every year, thus meaning that our example pupil can, if he is suited for linguistics, start secondary school at the highest level of Linguistics. The only classes that don't use this system are the arts and sports. The arts have everyone together and sports are divided based on age.

Even with such a system, there is no escaping age, so every grade is divided up into sections (e.g. Grade 6 might divided into Sections A, B and C). These Sections meet twice per week to discuss how everyone has been doing in their studies and to resolve various conflicts. Most importantly, these Sections also go on various excursions and trips together. Every Section has its own teacher that is responsible for the behaviour of its students and their grades, all within reason, of course.

There are three types of schools after the primary level, each focusing on a different type of education: exact sciences, humanities or arts. Every subject is available at every school, but there may be less emphasis on them. Pupils choose a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 12 subjects, with pupils allowed to pick whatever they want to pick. For example, someone who wanted to only take art subjects could certainly do that, but it wouldn’t be recommended by the career counsellors. Here follows a list of the available subjects:

Exact sciences:

Mathematics (subdivided into Calculus, Algebra and Geometry after Year 7)
Optics
Astronomy
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Geology
Geography
Engineering

Humanities:

Linguistics
Sociology
Religious studies
Economics
Literature
Philosophy
Psychology
Teknianian history
World history
State history (only available after Year 10)
Teknianian literature
World literature

Arts:

Sculpting
Painting
Music theory
Writing
Poetry
Architecture
Photography
Filmmaking
Theatre

While reading about the various “sit-down” subjects, one might wonder whether sports are even included in the education programme, and indeed they are, and quite liberally. In Years 1–4 (that is, primary education), the schools decide on a sports programme during this time, which must include all the different sports that pupils can choose to pursue during secondary and tertiary education.

When entering secondary school, Teknianian children choose, as mentioned previously, 8–12 subjects from the ones listed previously and two sports, both of which they’ll have twice per week. The range of sports is quite varied, giving every pupil sports that they’ll enjoy. Before these vast school reforms, the Teknianian people were some of the unhealthiest in the world, but now, only around a decade after the reforms began, Tekniania has climbed rankings by around 50 places. The sports available to pupils are as follows:

Swimming
Football
Basketball
Running
Cricket
Cycling
Gymnastics
Wrestling
Volleyball
Tennis

As with regular subjects, pupils can choose different sports every year if they so choose. From these, the most popular are swimming and volleyball (which is most often played on beaches in Tekniania), however, all the others are also decently popular. In addition, due to Tekniania’s aquatic nation, swimming is also a big part of the primary school sports programme.

In addition to all the elective classes mentioned previously, Tekniania also has some compulsory classes that all Years take. These are: Politics, Health (this includes Tekniania’s mandatory sex education) and Oratory (the art of public speaking). All of these are considered essential to Tekniania’s democracy and public health, and have all been mandatory for around 50 years now. As a result of these, Teknianians are some of the healthiest, most well informed and politically active people in the world.