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Advanced class

jokaec

Senior Member
Chinese - Hong Kong
Some schools in America don't have the talented and gifted classes. However, they put some top students in some specific classes, can I just call those classes "advanced classes" or they have another names? Thank you.
When I was at school (in the UK) this used to be known as "streaming", so the top class was referred to as the "A stream". However, the 'A' didn't stand for 'advanced': it referred more to the way the subject was taught than the fact that it was an "advanced class".

But let's wait and see what the AE speakers would call it. 👁 Wink ;)
When I was at school (in the UK) this used to be known as "streaming", so the top class was referred to as the "A stream". However, the 'A' didn't stand for 'advanced': it referred more to the way the subject was taught than the fact that it was an "advanced class".

But let's wait and see what the AE speakers would call it. 👁 Wink ;)
Thank you DonnyB. "A stream" is really a interest name.
We have had streaming in some form or other for years in UK schools. The nature of the stream (or band) is often loosely hidden by things like the initial letters of the schools name (say Barrs' Hill Grammar school might use the letter B, H and G for three streams, or BANDS of ability in each year group.) It's meant to stop the "bottom" band being labelled as such every day. In theory.
I don't know if we have a specific name for that. I started learning Spanish in one school then transferred to another school where they started Spanish a year later. They just put me ahead one year in Spanish but it didn't have a name.

In 5th grade math class there were three of us who were allowed to read ahead in the book and do the work while the rest of the class followed along with the teacher. But it wasn't anything official.
In the US, being placed in different classes based on ability is known as "tracking", though the term has been seen as somewhat loaded in the last couple years.

For example: "Our public school begins tracking in eighth grade."

This is a verb form derived from "track"; as in, "Sophie was placed into the Advanced Math track."
I think you can call them high/higher-ability classes.
Here, in India, different classes/batches of the students studying in the same grade in the same school are usually called sections. They are often labelled Section A, Section B, and so on. Sometimes there is a very high-ability class too, which is often called A+ Section. I also hear only "ability section" used to refer to a high-ability class here, but I'm not sure whether only "ability" (without "high", "higher" etc) is used that way by native English speakers.
Thanks.
We now have "advanced placement." Does that fit?
From Wikipedia
Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board which offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students. American colleges and universities may grant placement and course credit to students who obtain high scores on the examinations. The AP curriculum for each of the various subjects is created for the College Board by a panel of experts and college-level educators in that field of study. For a high school course to have the designation, the course must be audited by the College Board to ascertain that it satisfies the AP curriculum. If the course is approved, the school may use the AP designation and the course will be publicly listed on the AP Course Ledger.[1]
They were called "honors classes" when I was in school (1990s), but I the term is being phased out as part of the never-ending quest to figure out what to call the smart kids with language that doesn't implicitly diminish the rest.

In the US, many of these classes are part of a specific college prep program known as "Advanced Placement," and are thus known as "AP" classes.
AP is a specific program, a subcategory rather than a term for the overall thing.
My high school also had "honors" classes - but my dialect may be the same as snargleplax's (I'm from Seattle), so this might not be a very useful data point.

Apparently Washington State now has a "Highly Capable [Education] Program." My high school now offers a suit of "Highly Capable services." They seem to use the abbreviation "hi-cap." But note: this is all from official documentation. I have no idea if any of this vocabulary is used commonly.
When I in grades 7-12 in New Jersey, Math and English were required courses every year. Of the five 30-student classes in each grade, one Math and one English class was called an Advanced Placement" class.

In Math, this connected with the Advanced Placement program described in #8. In grade 12 we took Calculus (the other math classes did not), and I skipped the first Calculus course in college. There was nothing similar in English.
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