Talk:House system

I deleted the initial entry, on the grounds that it was irrelevant and inaccurate. The house system did not originate at Lawrenceville, although it certainly exists there. The house system originated in the British public school tradition, and this article should definitely have that focus. Also, some of the Lville-centered information was inaccurate and spotty. --Dablaze 09:19, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

I've merged the histories, so it may seem a little odd, because the content was all moved to House system whilst most, but not all, of the history was at House (school); further, I have moved it to House System, as that would be the appropriate term in BE, AIUI.

James F. (talk) 19:33, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, House System is not a proper noun, so I have moved it back to house system. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:01, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Harry Potter
Whether you like it or not, Harry Potter is significant to this subject. Many people are first exposed to the house system by Harry Potter (I am one of them), and I think it deserves a mention.
 * I like it not. It is not the purpose of an encylopedia to suggest works of fiction in which articles can be further explored. SillyWilly 00:52, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Is it not an easy way for a comparatively large number of people (# of people familiar with HP vs. number of people who have been to a British school with a house system) to grapple the idea in its entirety? Harry Potter may not be "significant to this subject", but as an example of a house system it has no equal in terms of number of people who are familiar with it. Willkm 01:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe that the illustration is a very useful one, works of fiction can display cultural traits of societies, and in this case, it seems rather uncontroversial. (No, I don't believe there is a "choosing magical hat" in  Repton School :P) nihil 21:39, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I think that Harry Potter should be included, if it is indeed true that most people know about the system through the books. I wouldn't be surprised. --RaphaelBriand (talk) 23:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I added a note to the Hogwarts entry on the "see also" list, they looked like one more real life famous house :P


 * If you have a better reliable source stating that Harry Potter fame helped to popularize the system on places where it was unknown, then please present it add to the article. I only found this, which only says "The HOUSE system has its roots in British educational culture and was recently (re-) popularized in the Harry Potter series.", from the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto (part of the United Jewish Communities), which doesn't give enough detail to support the claim I made on the article.


 * I hope that the sentence I added about translation can be kept even if the "popularization" sentence gets removed. I find that it has quite a good source. I purposefully didn't add the hogwarts wikilink on that sentence, since it wouldn't add anything at all, I'd rather keep it at the see also list. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:12, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Comparison with Japanese Club system...
Can anyone compare it? I mean, the Japanese system seems not as "deep" as the house system, but it could have been inspired by... nihil 21:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 10:18, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

State/Public
Actually, the house system in the UK is (in my experience) almost exclusive to public schools, with the similar structure in state and grammar schools called "Forms" or something else. --RaphaelBriand (talk) 23:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Not really. "Forms" is an obsolete word for year groups. Many state secondaries use years as their main way of grouping students for tutorials and pastoral work but in others the house system is used. Virtually always the teaching groups are comprised of students within one year. The intermediate layer of management may be "heads of years" or "heads of houses". The governors and the head decide which approach to take. David Miliband, when he was the secretary of state, made some statements in favour of house systems. It is seen as a way of breaking up the large size of the average comprehensive into a set of more human-scale establishments. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:02, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I went to a grammar school from 1993 to 2000, and the house system there was prominent and a part of school life; for example, in PE lessons you wore your house colours. I seem to recall a 'form' being the members in a particular house in a particular year group, i.e. I started in form 7D, which was the year 7 students in house Davies. 91.109.185.42 (talk) 15:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * In my vocabulary, indeed that used by my school at the time, a "form" is a group of pupils roughly equivalent to "class". Typically, this would be a subdivision of a year group, and may or may not have any relation to houses (see below).  Each form would have a tutor and be together for tutorial sessions and lessons in the core subjects. -- Smjg (talk) 00:09, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a fairly common modern innovation for state primary schools to have 'houses' - basically teams which earn points. 86.130.187.250 (talk) 19:27, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

The original post is wrong. The House system is common across the state system, both at primary and secondary levels. My local state comprehensive school has Houses.Lord Mauleverer (talk) 05:25, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Absentee parents?
"In a world with absentee parents more and more children require schools to look after their basic physical, social and emotional needs. Learning can only take place when these needs are being met, so it is natural for the school to provide this care."

This statement is pure opinion, isn't it? I'm really not sure what the procedure is for marking this, or whatever, so I'm putting my question up here. --gejyspa (talk) 16:03, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Relationship of houses to concrete groupings
"In the case of a day school, however, the word 'house' refers only to a grouping of pupils, rather than to a particular building." I think we need to look at this more closely. What concrete groupings houses relate to, if any, varies from school to school, not just on a boarding vs. day school basis.

For example, at the day/boarding school I attended, houses were just an abstract grouping of pupils, and the only real significance was that occasionally sports competitions would be held between them. It had nothing to do with where you are accommodated or what class you are in. At my sister's secondary school, on the other hand, houses determined the grouping of students into forms: each form was an intersection of a house and a year group. There would also on occasion be intra-house events such as music concerts.

What other examples are there? How best can we improve the article to reflect these facts? -- Smjg (talk) 23:58, 30 October 2010 (UTC)