This is like the perfect comparison of the level of education in both countries.

School is mandatory until 16 and there are formal qualifications that you sit exams for at 16. In the final 2 years of school, you pick from within certain areas, so for example you have to do maths and english, but you can pick either history or geography, you don't have to do both. You do 9 or 10 subjects and get 9 or 10 separate qualifications for said subjects.

You then do the 3 or 4 subjects from 16 to 18, with minimum requirements to study them, based on the 9 or 10 from earlier. E.g, if you want to study maths at 16-18, you need to have achieved at least a C at 16.

Then, when you apply to university, they specify minimum grades, such as CCC, ABB etc, often in specific subjects. If you want to study physics for example, they may specify an A in physics, a B in maths and a C in something else.

If you fk it all up and want to go back in to education in later life, you can go and do the 16-18 bit at the equivalent of a community college, get the grades required and proceed from there. Because the qualifications you typically do at 16 and 18 are nationally recognised, you can sit them at any age.

Some people might leave school at 16, work, have kids or whatever and then sit their A levels (the ones you typically sit at 18) when they are 35 and proceed on to university from there.

I generally compare it to a mentor/apprentice relationship. You help your advisor with their research and they give you peer review papers to review (tell you to shred them to bits if you can) that they then go over with you afterwards. You may be named on papers that your mentor authors.

As time goes on, you enter your journeyman phase and move more in to your own research, before producing your dissertation, or masterpiece, to be examined by other masters/phds.

We used to get paid a bursary by one of the research councils, which was roughly minimum wage. On top of that, the univsersity would pay you to run labs, workshops, mark assignments etc

The whole process is basically on the job training to be a professor.

You don't technically need to attend university to do a PhD. As long as you have an advisor at the university, the research can be done anywhere. We have partnerships with several universities where the commercial research my guys do counts.

I did my second PhD that way. I met my advisor twice a month, but otherwise didn't set foot on campus.