Fourth year, also known as S4, is the fourth year of schooling in Scottish, Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, Colombian, and other Latin American countries secondary schools, and is roughly equivalent to Year 11 in England and Wales and Year 12 (Fifth Form) in Northern Ireland. In Latin American countries, it is equal to the United States high school's senior year, but the Scottish S4 is equivalent to 10th grade. Most pupils are 15 or 16 years old at the end of S4. It is at the end of this year the pupils complete their Standard Grade or Intermediates examinations. It is also usually the last year of compulsory education in Scotland, depending on what time of the year the pupil was born. Near the end of fourth year pupils pick the subjects they want to take for highers (or A levels as they call it in England). They can also leave school if they are 16.
The term can also refer to the fourth year of a university course.
Famous quotes containing the words fourth year, fourth and/or year:
“We are playing with fire when we skip the years of three, four, and five to hurry children into being age six.... Every child has a right to his fifth year of life, his fourth year, his third year. He has a right to live each year with joy and self-fulfillment. No one should ever claim the power to make a child mortgage his today for the sake of tomorrow.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“... men and women are not yet free.... The slavery of greed endures. Little child workers, the hope of the future, are sacrificed to industry. Young men are sent out by the billion to die for profits.... We must destroy industrial slavery and build industrial democracy.... The people everywhere must come into possession of the earth [second, third, and fourth ellipses in source].”
—Sara Bard Field (1882–1974)
“He bends to the order of the seasons, the weather, the soils and crops, as the sails of a ship bend to the wind. He represents continuous hard labor, year in, year out, and small gains. He is a slow person, timed to Nature, and not to city watches. He takes the pace of seasons, plants and chemistry. Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)