Upper secondary school in
Finland. Between the
mandatory 9-year
elementary school and further
university studies. Not really the
Finnish equivalent of
high school, although often described as such. A
similar school system can be found in
Sweden.
Lukio is usually completed in 3 or 4 years, and often attended between ages 16 and 20. There aren't any
strict classes, so one can pick
courses from any class'
selection. At least 75 of these courses must be passed in order to
graduate. Some
subjects and
courses are mandatory, others the
student can freely
choose from.
Graduation also
requires passing
final exams, which take place
twice every
year. One doesn't have to take all of them at once. The
finals a student
must intend include finnish,
swedish (the 2nd
national language),
mathematics, 3rd language (usually
english) and "real". The last one is a group of other subjects like
biology,
physics and
history. One can leave either the math or the "real" out if they wish.
Once a lukio student has graduated,
he/she can apply into a university or a similar
institute.
I, along with many others born in
1979, took part in an
experiment where we only had a
miniscule amount of mandatory courses and could
build our
curriculum very freely. This was supposed to become the new
national system, but they found out it didn't work. Because of the
excess freedom,
lazy students (like myself :) easily had trouble falling behind.