Education A to Z

Education and Curriculum Terms: A Guide for Students and Teachers

Please note: This page explains a word or a process in education. It is general information about the system, the law and the guidance in England — not advice about your child, your school or your exam. If a decision is going against you, get advice from one of the free services we link to before you agree to anything or miss a deadline. If you are revising, check your own exam board's specification: boards word things differently and yours is the one that marks you.

Revising? We write GCSE revision songs — a playlist covering most subjects and the English set texts. Listen to the revision playlist.

500 terms, showing 411–420 (page 42 of 50).

S

Social class

Grouping by economic position, and how it shapes life chances.

Socialisation

How people learn the norms and values of their society.

Sociology basics

How sociology explains society: the main perspectives and the vocabulary.

Sociology of education

Why educational outcomes differ by class, gender and ethnicity.

Soliloquy

A character alone on stage, thinking aloud. The audience hears what nobody else does.

Solving equations

Finding the value that makes both sides equal.

Sonnet

Also called Shakespearean sonnet, Petrarchan sonnet

A fourteen-line poem in a fixed form, traditionally about love — which makes it loaded when it is not.

Source analysis

Working out what a historical source tells you, and how far you can trust it.

Source-based questions in history

The standard question types on a source paper, and what each rewards.

Space physics

The solar system, the life cycle of stars and the evidence for the Big Bang.

Ready when you are

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