Stage 1 - Primary schools (5 - 11-year-olds)

The first level of the British Education system is known as primary education. These are almost always mixed-sex and usually located close to the child's home. Children tend to be with the same group throughout the day, and one teacher has responsibility for most of the work they do.

At the end of Year 2 and Year 6, pupils take compulsory SATs (Standard Assessment Tests).

Stage 2 - Secondary schools (11 - 16-year-olds)

Most children transfer at the age of 11 - usually to their nearest secondary school, though the law allows parents in England and Wales to express preferences for other schools too. A place has to be offered at the parents' preferred school unless the school has more applicants than places; in that case, it will admit the children who have the highest priority under its published admission arrangements which can vary a little in different places. Most secondary schools cater to both sexes. They tend to be much larger than primary schools.

Comprehensive schools: Nearly 88% of secondary school pupils in England go to comprehensive schools, as do all pupils in Wales. These take children of all abilities and provide a wide range of secondary education for all or most of the children in a district from 11 to 16 or 18.

­Grammar Schools are selective, they offer academically oriented general education. Entrance is based on a test of ability, usually at 11. Grammar schools are single-sexed schools i.e. children either go to a Boys' Grammar School or a Girls' Grammar School. There are grammar schools in Northern Ireland and some parts of England.

During Year 9, students choose which subjects to study. These will be the subjects they take for their GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) exams at the end of Year 11.

At the end of students’ secondary education, they can either pursue academic qualifications such as A-Levels or IB in order to go to university, or vocational qualifications such as NVQs and BTECs to prepare them for full-time employment.

Independent Schools

Independent Schools, known as private/public schools, are part of the British education system. 7% of the children in England go to independent schools. Parents pay for their children to attend these schools. The most famous public schools are Eton, Harrow, and Winchester.

Prep Schools:  A preparatory school is a school to prepare pupils to go to a public school.

Public/Private Schools: A public school is an independent secondary school. Public schools in England are not run by the government. The entrance exams used by most public schools are known as Common Entrance exams and are taken at the age of 11 (girls) or 13 (boys).

AKA beverage bottle plastics. PET suits the job of keeping beverages shielded from bacteria inexpensively while keeping its glossy looks. Polyethylene Terephthalate is a lightweight plastic known for its excellent moisture barrier properties and resistance to alcohols, oils, and diluted acids. The common myth of leaving bottles in a hot car proves to be true, as PET contains the compound antimony trioxide, a carcinogen. Hotter temperatures stimulate the increase in the release of antimony trioxide to the contained liquid. This wrinkle-free plastic is non-biodegradable, due to its inert nature.

World’s most loved plastic. HDPE is the most widely used type of plastic due to its unbranched polymer chains, which makes it super dense and thick, but mouldable at the same time. Aside from that, it is malleable, long lasting, impact resistant, lightweight and mould resistant and is easily recyclable! What is there not to like?

Although its safety has been universally accepted, HDPE has been linked to contain oestrogen mimicking compounds that are stimulated to release when exposed under UV light. It is linked to hormonal imbalance issues.

Alias the killer. Found in toys, wraps, packaging, blood bags and water pipes, PVC is utilized in almost every industry. Water pipes in municipalities are often made out of Polyvinyl Chloride, because it is easy to install and odourless. Its base materials are: Chloride salts and Petroleum based ethylene. Chlorides are extracted from the seawater through electrolysis and ethylene is harvested through the cracking of petroleum.

57% of PVC is pure chloride, releasing chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA), lead, cadmium, dioxins and mercury. It has been proven that PVC causes fetal development issues, hormonal imbalance, cancer and diminished lung function. It is advised that the general public use PVC only when necessary.

Wrinkly supermarket bag plastics. LDPE plastics are polyethylenes, polymers with simple and branched structures (4,000 - 40,000 carbon atoms/polymer), making them less dense and crystalline in form. It is highly flexible and cheap to produce. It has good resistance towards acids, alcohols, esters, and bases making it a suitable material for food and hardware applications. This type of plastic is deemed safe.

Polypropylene (C3H6)n, a hydrocarbon and a monomer of propene also known as PP, is a rigid thermoplastic addition polymer. Polypropylene is also known to be more resistant to heat and degradation from UV rays than any other plastics. Polypropylene is widely used in the automotive industry(car bumpers or the carpet fibres of the interior) and consumer goods(water bottles or food containers).

Same as LDPE, PP is safe for food and drink use because it does not transmit chemicals into the things humans consume due to its relatively high melting point (171°C). It is also recyclable giving every reason why it’s better to use this.

The foamy one. 95% of polystyrene is composed of air. Most polystyrene foams are incorporated and foamed with carbon dioxide. It is a polymer of the liquid monomer, styrene. They are excellent insulators and are lightweight, making their popular function as take out box packages. other than that, PS is also used in surfboards, car parts and stabilization systems.

The brittle and flammable property of Styrofoam is reduced by adding 5–10% butadiene rubber. So far, all styrene products are deemed safe.

Bioplastic is a type of biodegradable plastic that is formed from renewable biomass resources such as vegetable oil and corn starch rather than from non-renewable resources such as petroleum.

The other example is called polycarbonate. Polycarbonate is a group of thermoplastic polymers containing carbonate groups in their chemical structures. Polycarbonates are typically used for baby bottles, Sippy cups, water bottles, water gallons and metal food can liners.

However, a lot of countries have banned the use of this plastic material. The chemicals inside PC can be transferred into the food or beverages, which explains the reason behind the numerous health problems such as decreased sperm production in males, various behavioural changes, increased risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer, and metabolic disorders.

Air-to-Ground (ATG) Wi-Fi

ATG is the same operating system used to provide Wi-Fi to your home or mobile devices. Your mobile device or wireless router receives and transmits radio signals through its antenna to/from ground-based cell towers, and it’s the same on an airplane.

An antenna is placed on the underside of an airplane’s body so that it is positioned to receive and transmit signals to/from these cell towers. As the airplane’s journey progresses, these signals move from one available cell tower to the next.

The limitation of ATG is the lack of cell towers in remote areas of land or large expanses of water such as oceans, causing this type of connection to only be suitable for land travel, with the expectation of some black spots here and there.

Wi-Fi speed is slow with an ATG connection at around 3 Mbps, so it’s suitable for checking emails or messaging apps but wouldn’t hold up against any bandwidth-intensive actions such as streaming or uploading files.

Satellite Wi-Fi

With satellite operating systems, ground-based units transmit signals to a satellite in orbit, which then relays the signal to the airplane.

This system allows for better connections where no cell tower coverage is present, such as over large expanses of water, although due to the distance the signals must travel, latency issues can be experienced which can still affect Wi-Fi speed.

Ku-Band and Ka-Band are 2 types of satellite operating systems with Ku-Band utilizing 12-18 GHz and Ka-Band 26.5-40 GHz. The higher the frequency, generally the higher the available bandwidth.

Ku-Band

Ku-Band speed is an improvement on ATG connections at around 30 to 40 Mbps; however, signals from satellites are shared with other airplanes so bandwidth reduction may occur depending on airspace concentration.

Although it’s not the fastest Wi-Fi available, it is the most consistent, with hundreds of Ku-Band satellites orbiting the earth, meaning that the airplane’s antenna will be more likely to maintain a signal. This bandwidth, when potentially split across many users, is generally not up to the job of streaming content.

Ka-Band

Ka-Band provides the most advanced high-speed satellite Wi-Fi, boasting up to 80 Mbps per airplane; however, there are significantly fewer Ka-Band satellites in orbit with a smaller geographical coverage, so it’s only suitable for some airlines at present.