School in Scotland

Heyy guyss,
how are you doing? Here I'm really happy and I'm finally starting to have real friends to go out during the weekend.
But I'll talk about this in another post.
In this post I'm going to explain to you, future exchange students, the high school in Scotland.
So, let's start.
The high school in Scotland lasts six years but it starts when you are 12 (in Italy II media) and it ends when you are 18 (a year before italy).
In the first two years you have to follow all the subjects, like languages, English, Maths, sciences.
At the end of S2 you have to decide 8 subjects that you'll study for two years; at the end of S4 you'll sit the exams called National 5. Normally English and Maths are compulsory. So in S2 the pupils start to decide what they want to study at university, something more artsy, with languages or with sciences.
At the end of S4 you'll decide 5 subjects that you'll study during S5 (they have to be 5 of the eight studied during S4).
At the end of S5 you'll sit the exams (Highers).
And here starts the mess.
Normally the pupils decide to stay on another year and do some Advanced highers (useful for English universities) but some of them decide to go to university when they are 17: here in Scotland, dear readers, you can easily go to you university at that age! A few of them do that but normally the Scottish universities require Highers and not Advanced Highers.
I'm here since a month and I can say without any doubt that the scottish school is really different and for some aspects better.
The level of the 5 subjects that you study during S5 is really high (eg in Maths I'm doing things that in Italy I'll probably do during IV year of high school). Some of you can think "yeah but at the end of the school you won't have a complete cultural background but you'll only know a lot in some subjects"; that's really true but, as said before, you do the subjects that you took really really well.
The school here it's not only study: there are a lot of clubs and sports at school (I've only joined the theatre company (amazing)) but there is also the choir, the string orchestra, the orchestra, climbing club, hockey club and a lot of other things.
I have to do two compulsory hours of PE (I play badminton and you don't get a mark) and three of Personal Support (sometimes we do our homework, sometimes we talk about our future,... Sometimes it's useful and sometimes not).
To be accepted by universities you don't have just to be good at school (like in Italy) but you also have to do some extracurricular activities (like sport, work, clubs, or be a prefect, people that try to maintain the school order ). I really like this point of view because the youth is pushed to work and try a lot of different things.
And for now it's everything.
Byee
~Tommaso

P.S.: At the moment I'm on a train (full of people in fancy dresses) to Edinburgh because I'm going to the open days of EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY!