University-preparatory school

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A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school (usually abbreviated to preparatory school, college prep school, or prep school) is a private secondary school designed to prepare a student for higher education. Some schools will also include a junior, or elementary, school.

Contents

1 North America
2 Europe

2.1 France
2.2 United Kingdom

3 External links

North America

There are three types of preparatory schools in the United States and Canada. Some have facilities in which students reside (known as boarding schools); most are day schools, and some boarding schools also admit students who reside locally, but who seek the benefits of prep schools. Some admit students of only one gender; others are co-educational. Prep schools are highly selective, academically challenging, and largely independent of state and local controls. The existence of such controls, which are a primary defining characteristic of public, government-operated, elementary and secondary schools, have contributed to the support and growth of prep schools, because these controls are widely viewed by preparatory school proponents as an unacceptable burden on the educational process, and on student outcomes such as university matriculation. Where public elementary and secondary schools, by design, teacher and administrator apathy, or simple neglect, are failing many students who wish to matriculate to university, prep schools ensure such progression. Preparatory schools are usually deemed expensive when casually compared with the indirect and somewhat hidden taxpayer financing of public elementary and secondary schools. At preparatory schools, tuition is used to pay excellent teachers and provide enriched learning environments. Preparatory schools offer teachers with graduate degrees and long tenures. These schools often have significant endowments which finance scholarships that allow demographic heterogeneity. Financial aid is also possible.

Preparatory schools place a strong emphasis on sports (see the Independent School Leagues or Southwest Preparatory Conference). University-preparatory education is also often associated with the preppy subculture.

In Canada, preparatory schools blend the American and British traditions. Education in Toronto, Upper Canada College is often regarded as Canada's foremost university preparatory school, and includes a junior school (kindergarten to grade 7) which is itself called the Preparatory School (dubbed colloquially "The Prep"), as it prepares students to go on to the secondary level of the College.

In the United States, prep schools are typified more by an exclusively American tradition. Some notable former prep school attendees include U.S. Presidents George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and other prominent figures such as John Kerry, Daniel Webster, John F. Kennedy Jr., William Randolph Hearst, and Dan Brown.

Prep schools are, by design, academically oriented. Low student-to-teacher ratios (half to less than half that of public elementary and secondary schools), excellent facilities, and superior faculties contribute to invariably higher university matriculation rates (on the order of 98% or better). Thus, prep schools are, because of their differing mission as compared to public elementary and secondary schools, both academically dissimilar and academically superior, in both method and substance, to public elementary and secondary schools.

Europe

France

In France, some high schools offer special postgraduate classes called classes préparatoires, equivalent in level to the first years of university, for students who wish to prepare for the competitive exams for the entrance in the Grandes écoles. French classes préparatoires are exceptionally intensive and selective, taking only the very best students graduating from high schools but generally not charging fees.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom the concept of the college or university preparatory school has never had currency; schools are classified in other ways instead. However the term preparatory school, more commonly "prep school" is used in a different way to descibe schools which prepare students under thirteen for prestigious fee-paying Public Schools.

External links

Schools - [http://encycl.opentopia.com/ edit]

By age group: Primary school / Elementary school • Junior high school / Middle school • Secondary school / High school

By funding: Private school • Public school • Independent school • Independent school (UK) • Grammar school • Charter school

By style of education: Day school • Vocational school • Free school • Alternative school • Parochial school • Boarding school • University-preparatory school • Cyberschool•k-12•

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