Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

In Quebec you find a similar program; elementary school is K-6, and high school is 7-11. Following this you can optionally attend an interstitial educational system called "CEGEP".

It's government funded and costs next to nothing.

CEGEP has two streams, pre-university or professional. For the latter, you learn skills like aircraft mechanics. For the former, you pick a stream that bulks up what would normally be first-year university courses like calculus, biology etc for a science stream.

However, you are required to take approx 15-20% of your courses in an "opposite" stream to force you to get acquainted with other alternatives before you commit to university. In addition, the structure is much like university (you pick your classes & schedule, class sizes are increased compared to HS, your responsibility is increased) which is a good transition for university if that's where you're headed.

I think it's a wonderful system and I wish it was more widespread.

I went through the CEGEP system in Quebec and honestly credit it with giving me the skills necessary to be successful in university. My high school was very lenient and gave me a lot of flexibility to work on personal projects, and overall that worked out great but I was definitely lacking the grit necessary to dive deep into topics I couldn’t quickly understand.

CEGEP provided an excellent transitionary structure where you had both more responsibility for your actions and results, and also a forgiving safety net. You’re forced to do near-university-level study of subjects in an environment where the professors are able to hold your hand a bit more, will tolerate late assignments, and if you screw up it won’t permanently tank your future academic prospects.

The tuition at CEGEP was free. You just paid a few fees to the school and the student union, which added up to about $120/semester at the time. This made it a lot more palatable to try out a math- or science-heavy stream and switch out of it if you decided it wasn’t something you’d want to continue in university. The gen ed classes were also great.