Talk:Primary school/Archive 1

Previous discussions
For previous discussions about primary education, primary schools and elementary schools please refer to Talk:Primary education. Dahliarose 08:27, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * why rush —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.213.135.187 (talk) 17:49, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Primary School
I've never seen "Primary School" = "Elementary school" in the US. In the places I've lived (California, Arkansas, Missouri), "Primary School" always referred to grades 1-3 (or up to about 10 years of age). Elementary schools could include a primary school, but typically went up to grade 6. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.116.87.110 (talk) 14:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Please note that the article did not claim that primary school = elementary school and it did make the following statement "Very few schools in the US actually use the term primary school as part of their school name and such schools are generally private schools, serving very young children." There is no need for the unreferenced point of view you posted which was " Usually a primary school is part of an Elementary School, but this is not necessarily always the case." Dbiel (Talk) 14:41, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm - I'll look for official backup that "Primary" usually means 1-3 grades here. Perhaps you do not believe this to be the case, but a the first search for "Primary Grades" in google returns this page: http://www.suelebeau.com/primary.htm which specifically shows primary being grades 1-3.

Please note also that the article does imply that Primary School is Elementary school in North America: "some countries, and especially in North America, the term elementary school is preferred"  All I am saying is that "Primary school" refers to schools that handle the lower grades, usually 1-3. When an elementary school has grades 1-3 in addition to higher grades, the lower grades are still referred to as "primary school", and indeed may even have a separate principal even though they share the same school grounds. 216.116.87.110 (talk) 20:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge
Is there enough information here and in Primary education that it can stand alone, or can they be merged? Caduon (talk) 07:31, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There is far too much information here to make a merge practical. Dahliarose (talk) 12:23, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
 * If you can produce a good quality overview article, then please merge all three (or at least primary school with elementary school). One concept needs one article. Details about individual countries can be separated into individual articles. Littledogboy (talk) 11:43, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I have merged the 'country by country' section into Primary Education. I will do the same for Elementary school. I suggest we then consider (again) merging Primary School and Elementary School, but we can come back to that discussion in a bit. PeterEastern (talk) 02:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Merge with Elementary school
I have created a section on talk:Elementary school recommending that that article is merged into this one. Lets have the discussion there. PeterEastern (talk) 02:59, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's appropriate to merge elementary school and primary school. They both have very different meanings. Also I note that the historical UK meaning of elementary school has been removed from the elementary school. Elementary schools are an important part of the history of education in the UK and need to be recognised in this article. Dahliarose (talk) 10:22, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I note that you have also responded on talk:Elementary school which is where I was suggesting that we continue this conversation. Can you ensure that your views are appropriately expressed on that talk page and can we then delete the comment from this page? Feel free to delete this response from me at the same time. PeterEastern (talk) 16:15, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Its news to me that primary school and elementary school have "very different meanings". I highly doubt it. In reading these comments, I realize that my usage is different from those from other parts of the USA, which should be accepted as indicating that the term can mean various things. First and most obviously (imho) a primary education is generally considered through grade 6, possibly grade 8. Schools providing that education are . If you chose "not primary schools" then there is a problem of consistency here. There can be no doubt that (in the USA) 5th through 8th, and even 9th and 4th grades may or may not be in the same category in a particular school district. These middle schoolers may be situated in the elementary (aka primary) schools, be in a middle school (aka junior high) and 9th graders are often in high school, but not always. (Of course, 10th Graders are never considered "Freshmen"...) Attempting to prescribe the meaning/definition of a term which has multiple ones is not in Wikipedia's purview. It reads very awkwardly and needs to be redone. I would strongly recommend a historical (or semi-historical) structure be used, rather than the current mish-mash.173.189.72.165 (talk) 22:40, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is a worldwide encyclopaedia and just restricted to readers in America. Schooling systems are different in different countries. For example, elementary school has a completely different meaning in the UK and is only used in the historical context. This article needs a lot of improvement but I don't think a merge with elementary school is justified. This article was originally because of the confusion over the terminology in different countries.Dahliarose (talk) 11:32, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

sp "elemtary" in various WP articles
could someone correct to "elementary".GinAndChronically (talk) 23:16, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Information.svg Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). TJRC (talk) 00:34, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm naught hat al afred of makin changes myself but assume that the same corection can be mhade by that purson that has the abillite n won move to do all.GinAndChronically (talk) 01:28, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Redirect
An anonymous IP took the decision to redirect the page for elementary school to this page but the redirect does not appear to have been discussed so I have reverted the edit. It seems to me that it would be best to have two separate pages. The US-specific material on this page would perhaps be better off on the page for elementary school. An elementary school has a specific historical meaning in British English and is not the same thing as a primary school. Dahliarose (talk) 18:31, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Merge with Elementary school - July 2017
It has been suggested that Elementary school be merged into this article.
 * Support there is minimal content at Elementary school and they cover the same topic. Difference appears to be restricted to country-specific terminology and practice, but both refer to schools for the same age range. Lineslarge (talk) 21:52, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose They have different meanings in different countries, and all it does is generalize when we need to be specific and accurate. I agree with Dahliarose in this instance, and concerning the conversation above. scope_creep (talk) 10:54, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It is not going to help, all a merger would do is to make the receiving article impossible to edit. Every sentence then has to be qualified with the limitation clause "but in XXXXX". Follow the problems we had untangling Secondary education, Secondary school , High school (North America). There was a debate at Talk:Primary education in 2013, the only solution is more work on each article ClemRutter (talk) 10:32, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose - America isn't the only country in the world and as such various topics outside of America should be respected, Plus merging is only going to cause alot of confusion anyway, best off left where it is. – Davey 2010 Talk 12:21, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. They are the same basic concept with different terminology. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 09:19, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

The result of the consultation was to merge! Who was about to do it was unclear. I intend to be WP:BOLD and merge elementary school here. I will start by c&p the page over to here in its entirety, cull duplicate material. I will then include material from both talk pages which in general are more informative than both pages. That done elementary school will become first a redirect. This should be finished by Friday- if it is a total Graylng- then we can resurrect the status quo on Sunday!

At this point I would like to move the pedagogical theory to primary education, and keep the instances of it- ie the governance and structure of individual schools here in Primary schools. ClemRutter (talk) 14:40, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks Clem for taking the initiative on the merger. What you've done looks fine. There is still a lot of overlap between the primary school and the page on primary education. I agree it would be best to have the theory on the education and the school structures on this page. Sorry but I don't have much time at present to do any editing.Dahliarose (talk) 21:02, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Repeating comments regarding the merger

 * Response from 
 * On all education matters we need to go back to the ISCED definitions- and currently ISCED 2011. A primary school delivers ISCED 2011 phase one- while a elementary school delivered the elementary education that a working class child in 1902 would need to become part of the labour force, this in 2011 speak would include ISCED 2011 phase one and parts of phase two. In the UK in 1944, the Elementary schools were divided into Primary Elementary Schools (known as Primary Schools) and Secondary Elementary Schools (Secondary Modern Schools). In the states they continued to call them Elementary Schools. Linguistically, it is hard to distinguish. Look at Canada in the Educational stage page, and particularly Newfoundland and Yukon. In an ISCED 2011 spreadsheet for France we find les enfants passant from the Maternelle (education pre-elementaire) to the Ecole (education primaire), which you can interpret as synonymous or using the distinction I mentioned above. This discussion of the terms can be incorporated into the merged article. Our article fr:École élémentaire en France says that when the Maternelle, and the Élémentaire are on the same site then that is spoken of as a École Primaire!
 * This article suggests the term école primaire originates in France in 1802, a glance at French Wikipedia fr:Histoire de l'éducation en France will give:the loi du 12 décembre 1792 qui a pour objectif d'ouvrir l'enseignement primaire. This to me suggests that the existing article was not very well researched, and needs to be erased and should be started afresh. ClemRutter (talk) 10:53, 23 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Response from 
 * As they currently stand, there is not enough content in, or difference between, the articles to justify two separate articles. Elementary school is essentially an enlarged dab page, while Primary school explicitly covers both topics in a single article. Personally, I would convert Elementary school to a disambigustion page and keep Primary School as is. I would also consider merging Primary education or creating a clearer split of topic as there is a large crossover at present. Lineslarge (talk) 13:26, 19 March 2019 (UTC)