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 451–460 (page 46 of 50).

T

T Level

A two-year technical qualification at 18, equivalent to three A Levels, with a substantial industry placement.

Talking to school about a worry

How to raise something early, before it becomes a complaint.

Teaching assistant

Also called TA, LSA, Learning support assistant, HLTA

Support staff working alongside teachers. Not a substitute for teaching, and often deployed as one.

Team around the family

Also called TAF, TAC, Team around the child

A meeting of everyone working with a family, with the family in the room. Co-ordination rather than assessment.

Tectonic hazards

Earthquakes and volcanoes: why they happen where they do, and why the effects differ so much.

Tenses in a modern language

Past, present and future. Using three tenses accurately is the single biggest lift in a language grade.

Term dates and holidays

Who decides when school is open, and why leave in term time is refused.

Testing and debugging

Checking a program works, and finding out why it does not.

The carbon cycle

How carbon moves between the atmosphere, oceans, rocks and living things.

The Earth's atmosphere and resources

How the atmosphere formed, what pollutes it, and how we use up finite resources.

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