Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in Canada

Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better organize information in articles related to Education in Canada. If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page.

This is the 2nd-generation WikiProject to focus on Education in Canada. The previous project has been archived. The corresponding talk page has also been archived.

Scope
The original scope of this project was to handle all things related to education in Canada. However, time has shown that some contributors to this project are currently more inclined to work on K-12 articles, and school boards, rather than college and university articles.

In short:
 * elementary schools
 * middle schools
 * secondary schools
 * CEGEPs (Quebec)
 * school boards

While templates and some conventions will be used from WikiProject for Colleges &amp; Universities, we still maintain that in Canada, Universities and Colleges are part of our Education system.

Similar or Related WikiProjects

 * WikiProject Schools
 * Wikipedia:WikiProject Colleges and Universities
 * WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/High schools/other list
 * WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/High_schools/CA

Task forces
The higher education task force is defunct and has been archived.

Featured articles

 * Canadian Indian residential school system (promoted August 20, 2017)
 * Eric A. Havelock (November 6, 2006)
 * Harold Innis (June 2, 2008)

Featured lists

 * List of Athabasca University people
 * List of University of Waterloo people
 * List of Wilfrid Laurier University people

Good articles

 * Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse
 * École L'Odyssée
 * Dalhousie University
 * Marie Smallface Marule
 * McMaster University
 * Queen's University at Kingston
 * School District 53 Okanagan Similkameen
 * University of Toronto

Names of school boards or school districts
School boards typically have a single official name, and the articles are typically named as the school board. One province -- British Columbia -- has a uniform naming convention, which is discussed on the list of school districts in British Columbia. For other provinces, look through the lists, look through the list of categories, or directly into Category:School districts in Canada.

Names of schools
The school naming conventions guideline was rejected by the community, but still contains some ideas that may help. Also note the new proposal for US schools at Naming conventions (U.S. schools). Once that proposal is accepted, we'll submit a similar proposal to cover Canadian schools. Below are the guidelines we've used so far when naming schools articles:


 * 1) If the school board's web site and the school's web site differ in the name of a school, prefer the one that people commonly use.  Schools at times will be known under a slightly different name than the official or legal school name.  Consider whether or not a redirection page is necessary.
 * 2) Expand all common abbreviations in the school's name.  For example, a school known as Main Street HS would be turned into an article called Main Street High School.  See the table on the right for examples of common abbreviations often found in school names.
 * 3) Proper names may or may not be abbreviated depending on how the name is commonly used.  Two opposite examples:
 * 4) * Use A. Y. Jackson Secondary School instead of Alexander Young Jackson Secondary School.
 * 5) * Use Pierre Elliott Trudeau High School instead of P. E. Trudeau High School.
 * 6) Abbreviations in the school name -- such as A. Y. Jackson -- contain periods after the letter and a blank space after each period.  For example:
 * 7) * Use A. Y. Jackson Secondary School instead of A Y Jackson Secondary School.
 * 8) * Use A. Y. Jackson Secondary School instead of A.Y. Jackson Secondary School.

Names for categories
There are several small inconsistencies in the naming of categories used by the Education in Canada project, but if you'd like to propose a new category, look through the existing comprehensive list of categories to see how other provinces or territories are using categories.

Names for navboxes
Each school board navbox is a new template that needs a unique name. When you need to create a new navbox, look through the list of existing Canadian education navboxes to see how they're named. Typically, we've been using the school board name or the school board abbreviation, immediately followed by the word Schools.

Names for templates
Some of our templates (such as Infobox Education in Canada, and Navbox Education in Canada) are named after the project's name, Education in Canada. However, we have just as many templates where the name does not contain Education in Canada: Canadian School District and Canada-school-stub. See the section below which discusses the templates regularly used in this project.

French names
Institutions shouldn't be renamed. Use the name of the school or school board, as it is commonly known. Note that this also affects capitalization in the article title, since French dictates that articles and adjectives in a name are not capitalized. For example:
 * Use École élémentaire catholique des Pionniers, not École Élémentaire Catholique Des Pionniers, nor Catholic Elementary School Of The Pionneers.
 * Use Conseil scolaire de district du Centre-Sud-Ouest, not Conseil Scolaire De District Du Centre-Sud-Ouest nor School Board For The Central-South-West District.

Structure
For general guidance on article structure (not specific to Canada), see WikiProject Schools.

Universities and colleges
We follow the format for colleges and universities as laid out at WikiProject_Universities. However, we may deviate from this, or alter it to form our own structure. See the talk page for relevant discussion.

Elementary, middle, and high schools

 * 1) always start with a standardized template; see Infobox Education in Canada, and schools that use this template for examples of how to use this template
 * 2) create the relevant sections in the article; examples:
 * 3) History
 * 4) Academics
 * 5) Athletics
 * 6) Departments
 * 7) Staff (note: this should not be a listing of regular staff)
 * 8) ...need more examples of section headings
 * 9) the article typically shouldn't need to link to other schools; instead, use the feeders field from the infobox, or the navigation bar at the bottom of the article
 * 10) below any See also and External links sections, insert (don't subst!) the appropriate navigation bar; most schools should have a navigation bar linking together schools from the same school district (there is a discussion in progress as to what to do with very large or very small school boards where a navbox isn't a viable solution)
 * 11) below the navigation bar, if necessary, insert (don't subst!) one of the appropriate stub template:
 * 12) * Canada-school-stub
 * 13) * Alberta-school-stub
 * 14) * BritishColumbia-school-stub
 * 15) * Manitoba-school-stub
 * 16) * NewBrunswick-school-stub
 * 17) * Newfoundland-school-stub
 * 18) * NovaScotia-school-stub
 * 19) * Ontario-school-stub
 * 20) * PrinceEdwardIsland-school-stub
 * 21) * Quebec-school-stub
 * 22) * Saskatchewan-school-stub
 * 23) lastly, at the bottom of the article should be the appropriate categories (more on this below)
 * 24) on the very top of the school's talk page, use the template

School boards

 * 1) always start with a standardized template; there isn't 1 single Canada-wide template to use:
 * 2) BC: Infobox BC School District
 * 3) All others:  Infobox Canadian School District
 * 4) school boards typically have a table of schools, and don't directly use the navigation bar; see examples from the list of Canadian school boards (e.g., School District 43 Coquitlam)
 * 5) if necessary, insert (don't subst!) one of the appropriate stub template:
 * 6) * Canada-school-stub
 * 7) * Alberta-school-stub
 * 8) * BritishColumbia-school-stub
 * 9) * Manitoba-school-stub
 * 10) * NewBrunswick-school-stub
 * 11) * Newfoundland-school-stub
 * 12) * NovaScotia-school-stub
 * 13) * Ontario-school-stub
 * 14) * PrinceEdwardIsland-school-stub
 * 15) * Quebec-school-stub
 * 16) * Saskatchewan-school-stub
 * 17) at the bottom of the article should be the appropriate categories (more on this below)
 * 18) note that individual school boards typically shouldn't have categories to group the schools together; instead, use the navboxes to group schools together; this will need to be discussed for school boards with too many or too few schools to use a navbox
 * 19) on the very top of the school board's talk page, use the template


 * Lastly, most school boards -- as a service to the individual school articles for that board -- will provide a navbox to help users navigate from one school to another within the school board. See the standardized template Navbox Education in Canada, and the information below describing how to use  .  Note that navboxes likely wont work for school boards with too many or too few schools.  These school boards will need to be discussed here and the project will be updated once we know how to handle these cases.

Logos
Logos of schools, teams, school boards, universities and colleges cannot be uploaded to Commons (Commons:Licensing:fair use clause), but can be uploaded to English-language Wikipedia as fair use provided the article in question is directly related to, or discusses, the logo being shown and a Fair use rationale is provided.

Schools
Elementary and Secondary School logos should be tagged as School logo and must have a Fair use rationale such as can be generated with Non-free use rationale and categorised with Category:PreK through Grade 12 public and private school logos.

This can be easily done using the template: Article name though the category is the more general Category:Academic institution logos.

School boards
School board logos should be tagged as Non-free logo and must have a Fair use rationale such as can be generated with Non-free use rationale and categorised with Category:Public and private school board logos.

Universities, colleges, and CEGEPs
Much the same as elementary and secondary schools, university, college, and CEGEP logos should be tagged as School logo and must have a Fair use rationale such as can be generated with Non-free use rationale and categorised with Category:University logos

This can be easily done using the template: Article name though the category is the more general Category:Academic institution logos.

Teams
In the same way as school and university logos except the appropriate category is Category:Academic sports logos.

Uploading pictures
Ideally, every school article should have a free image. If you have a digital camera image to contribute, please upload it to Commons, use a free license such as Dual-licensed under the GFDL and CC-By-SA-2.5, 2.0, and 1.0, and assign it to a sub-category under Commons:Category:Schools in Canada so other editors may easily find it regardless of what language Wikipedia is being used.

Please note that we cannot use pictures that were found on web sites! This includes pictures from the school board, newsletters, blogs, the Ministry of Education web site, or the school's web site. The copyright for these pictures is typically held by the person who took the pictures or the web site hosting the pictures. Instead, take a brand new picture to ensure it is free.

Also note that logos cannot be uploaded to Commons. See the section above on logos.

Pictures needed
School articles that are more than just stubs, yet lacking a decent picture and/or logo, can be listed here. Thanks to anyone living nearby who can contribute a digital picture.

School infoboxes

 * Individual schools normally use Infobox Education in Canada. There are many examples of this template being used.


 * Post-secondary schools normally use Infobox university, and post-secondary student associations use Infobox student association or Infobox students union.

School board infoboxes

 * At the moment, there are 2 school board infoboxes:
 * BC School District is specific to British Columbia
 * Canadian School District should be generic enough for all other provinces and territories
 * See the section above for additional information on setting up a school board article.

School board navboxes

 * School boards normally provide a custom navigation bar based on Navbox Education in Canada. These school-board specific navboxes are then usually placed at the very bottom of the school articles.  Creating a new navbox entails creating a new template, named after the school board, which then uses Navbox Education in Canada.  It is easier to point to examples, rather than to describe the process:
 * 1) Examples of working navboxes can be found in Category:Canadian education navigational boxes.
 * 2) The master template contains some usage information in case the previous examples are not clear.

Talk pages

 * The top of talk pages for schools, school boards, universities, colleges and templates should be tagged with the banner

School and school board stub templates
For schools and school boards, use the following stubs:
 * Alberta-school-stub
 * BritishColumbia-school-stub
 * Manitoba-school-stub
 * NewBrunswick-school-stub
 * Newfoundland-school-stub
 * NovaScotia-school-stub
 * Nunavut-school-stub
 * NorthwestTerritories-school-stub
 * Ontario-school-stub
 * PrinceEdwardIsland-school-stub
 * Quebec-school-stub
 * Saskatchewan-school-stub
 * Yukon-school-stub

For non-specific articles, use Canada-school-stub.

Use of the stub automatically places the article in Category:Canadian school stubs except for BritishColumbia-school-stub and Ontario-school-stub which populate Category:British Columbia school stubs and Category:Ontario school stubs respectively. When the other provinces have sufficient numbers of stub articles, separate categories may be warranted.

College and university stub template
Both colleges and universities may use Canada-university-stub.

University ranking template
University articles may use the Infobox Canadian university rankings template to summarize information about rankings of Canadian universities.

Categories
Beware of subcategories. There are several subcategories that already exist within the Education in Canada scope that unfortunately break the pattern you'd expect. For example: If I choose to view the category called Category:High schools in Ontario, you'd think that would show me all high schools in Ontario. Alas, that is not the case, because some high schools in Ontario are instead categorized as Category:High schools in Hamilton, Ontario, Category:High schools in Toronto, Category:High schools in Ottawa, or Category:Education in Niagara Region. The good news is this situation only exists in Ontario -- none of the other provinces or territories have broken the categories down to cities or regions.

For this reason, editors of Education in Canada are urged to resist the temptation to create new subcategories based on boundaries finer than province/territory. At the very least, please discuss on the talk page prior to creating such categories.

A full hierarchy listing of the categories that make up Education in Canada is available as a subpage (due to the size). Within this subpage are some notes indicating several places where categories are missing or where we currently have categories that don't really belong in the Education in Canada project.

Lists
Some of the existing lists will be very difficult to keep up-to-date as new schools open, or even due to differently-spelled wikilinks which could result in multiple articles on the same school. Unless we can somehow come up with an automated way to ensure the lists are regularly updated, we should probably consider deleting some of these lists:


 * List of schools in Canada
 * List of colleges in Ontario
 * List of educational institutions in Toronto
 * List of English catholic schools in Ottawa
 * List of English public schools in Ottawa
 * List of French catholic schools in Ottawa
 * List of French public schools in Ottawa
 * List of French public schools in Eastern Ontario
 * List of Manitoba School Divisions and Districts
 * List of Nova Scotia schools
 * List of Ontario school boards
 * List of Quebec art schools
 * List of schools in Quebec
 * List of Saskatchewan school divisions
 * List of school districts in British Columbia
 * List of schools in New Brunswick
 * List of schools in Ottawa
 * List of Waterloo Region, Ontario schools


 * List of universities in Canada
 * List of colleges in Canada
 * List of CEGEPs
 * List of colleges in Canada's Territories
 * List of private universities in Canada
 * List of law schools in Canada
 * List of business schools in Canada
 * List of Canadian university leaders

Decisions from previous discussions
Somewhat like a list of frequently-asked-questions, here are some decisions that were made in the past which are likely to come up again with newer articles.

Tools

 * Main tool page: toolserver.org


 * Reflinks - Edits bare references - adds title/dates etc. to bare references
 * Checklinks - Edit and repair external links
 * Dab solver - Quickly resolve ambiguous links.
 * Peer reviewer - Provides hints and suggestion to improving articles.