英语国家概况 总结

Britain

Government

The Legislature

●The United Kingdom is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch.

● A king or queen is the head of state, and a prime minister is the head of government.

●The people vote in elections for Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent them.

●Consists of the House of Lords, the House of Commons, and the Crown.

●Head of Government: Prime Minister

●Parliament (659 in House of Commons, more than 660 in House of Lords)

●Highest Court: House of Lords (Lord Chancellor is head of judiciary)

●V oting Qualifications: All citizens age 18 and over

The Executive

●The chief executive is the prime minister, who is a member of the House of Commons.

●The executive branch also includes Her Majesty’s Government, commonly referred to

simply as “the government.”

●The government is composed of ministers in the Cabinet, most of whom are members of the

House of Commons; government departments, each of which is responsible to a minister;

local authorities; and public corporations.

●The prime minister presides over the Cabinet and selects the other Cabinet members, who

join him or her to form the government that is part of the functioning executive.

●Acting through the Cabinet and in the name of the monarch, the prime minister exercises all

of the theoretical powers of the Crown, including making appointments.

●Two key doctrines of Cabinet government are collective responsibility and ministerial

responsibility.

The Judiciary

●Judges are appointed from among practicing lawyers.

●Barristers or advocates advise on legal problems and present cases in the lay justices' and jury

courts.

●Solicitors represent individual and corporate clients and appear in the lay justices' courts.

●Lay justices need no legal qualifications but are trained to give them sufficient knowledge of

the law.

Education

Primary and Secondary Education

●Up to age 5, children may have some pre-primary schooling in nursery schools, daycare or

play groups.

●Between the ages of 5 to 11, pupils mainly attend state sector primary schools. These

schools are called co-educated or mixed schools because they admit both boys and girls.

●From the age of 11 up to around the age of 19, students attend secondary schools. More than

80% of pupils in secondary students in England and Wales attend mixed schools ; 60% in Northern Ireland; Scotland, nearly all.

Higher education

●only one privately funded university: the University of Buckingham

●oldest universities:

1) England—Oxford (12th C.) and Cambridge (13th C.)

2) Scotland: St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen from 14th and 15th centuries