Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Archive 25

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Public v private in the UK

Has a definitive decision ever been made with regard to the above issue? Throughout the UK it is clearly understood that, for example, Eton College is a Public school (United Kingdom), a term that in fact indicates private status. User:Garageland66 is changing many articles on UK public schools, without consensus as far as I can see, to call them private schools.Paste Let’s have a chat. 08:52, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

My aim is consistency. Every Wiki article on private schools in the U.S., in Europe and accross the developed world, describes private schools as 'private schools'. It's inconsistent and likely to cause confusion if that consistency is not applied to the U.K. (Garageland66 (talk) 13:21, 6 January 2017 (UTC))

This does not need a great discussion, Garageland66. Your kind of 'consistency' is inadmissible PoV. In England they talk English and use British English expressions and terminology. What they do where you come from is up to you, but you must respect different cultures and not change their language for them. Other people have tried here and they quickly got themselves blocked or banned. I suggest you spend some time reading our policies and guidelines, getting some editing experience, and perhaps also broadening your world view. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:35, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
Agree 100% with Kudpung regarding British English. I acknowledge that it is a silly Britishism, but nevertheless it is what it is. Note that I do not go around correcting aluminum (sic) in US english based articles. Roxy the dog. bark 13:42, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
There seems to be an desire to strip articles of accuracy and truth in order to fulfil this POV. A lot of this fuss could be avoided if the consistency pushers just read a few Wikipedia articles Public school (United Kingdom) for example. The Public Schools Act 1868 is quite clear about what a public school should be. Rugby School alone predates US local usage of the term by 3 centuries any later use of the term 'public'. More recently, the Public Schools Yearbook was published for the first time in 1889. To clarify the issue, if the school is state-funded, or not public because it is funded by the state but not open to all of the public (faith-school) perhaps that should be stated. ClemRutter (talk) 15:11, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
I think it important that we're clear as to Garageland66's aim. His objective is not consistency, in order to address an alleged, but totally unproven, confusion - it's a very clear POV agenda. His repeated edit summary "Honesty please" demonstrates not only his motivation, but his disregard for a fundamental tenet of Wikipedia, NPOV. It isn't about what he, or I, think, it's about what the sources say. KJP1 (talk) 21:21, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
This isn’t a language issue. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia not a dictionary. The terms ‘independent’ and ‘private’ mean the same thing in British English, American English, Australian English etc. The issue is accuracy and truthfulness.(Garageland66 (talk) 13:44, 7 January 2017 (UTC))
Garageland66, IMO, This is quite clearly a defiant demonstration of non respect for the multiple cultures that are represented by this English language Wikipedia. If the disruption continues the issue will be escalated to an appropriate venue where administrators will have the final word. This does not preclude interim preventative measures. Please see the official messages on your talk page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:59, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
As I've explained, this has nothing to do with language and culture. This is an issue of clarity, accuracy and consistency. If, for you, it is an issue of language and wording, I have responded by compromising and including both words 'independent' and 'private'. I would plead with you to respond to this attempt at compromise and ask you why you don't want the word 'private' included? Can you provide evidence that these schools are not private? (Garageland66 (talk) 15:04, 7 January 2017 (UTC))
If you continue on this disruptive course, I expect that measures against your behaviour will be called for. Roxy the dog. bark 15:44, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Garageland66, you're fighting an unwinnable war. It's a long held concensus here that we write about geographically specific topics in the local English dialect. As little sense as it makes to us Americans, that is the phraseology used in Britain. If you wish to change that, you should argue your position at WP:ENGVAR. Hopefully after you get back from your block, you'll realize edit warring over it on various school articles is not going to achieve what you want. I'm going to join with everyone else that has commented here and ask to to stop. Your position has zero support. Continuing on the course you were on prior to your block will only lead to longer blocks. John from Idegon (talk) 22:18, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

By way of information, User:Garageland66's original description on his user page as "Communist, trades-unionist and anti-austerity campaigner", and his edit history, make me 99.9% certain that he is a Brit, like me. His motivation is not linguistic, it's entirely political. KJP1 (talk) 23:07, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
@Garageland66: I'll put it this way, then. Maybe you think it's wrong that the word "public school" in the UK is being used in this way. Remember Wikipedia is descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words we can't tell people that "this usage is wrong, it should be this." We need to reflect the existing language usage in society. We only change our terminology/vocabulary after society has already done so. Because British society uses "public school" in this manner, Wikipedia should use "public school" in that manner for UK articles until after the language terminology has already changed in mass society. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:40, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
There is an obvious overwhelming consensus that we shall use "public school" on British school articles in just the manner we have been. It appears clear enough to me that Garageland66 should consider himself bound by this concensus and any further disruptive editing in this area should be cause for further administrative action. John from Idegon (talk) 01:48, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Thank you everyone for upholding our Wikipedia principles especially project coord Tedder who without any further ado went ahead and did the right thing, which has also avoided a possible time wasting peanut gallery shoot out. Help with a clean up would be very much appreciated and I've already reduced the PP at Winchester. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:03, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello, all, I've reverted all of the following articles back to a point before Garageland and certain suspicious IP users became interested in them:

There are a few others which I've put a watch on. I don't think any action is needed with them at the moment. Thanks. Jack | talk page 13:09, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

RfC on the notability of secondary schools

An RfC on the notability of secondary schools has been opened. You can comment at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC on secondary school notability. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:29, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Student demographics guidance

Should student demographics be included in school (and school district / school system) articles? If yes, how should they be included? By demographics, I mean race/ethnicity, economically disadvantaged percentage, and similar current statistics that can be cited from reliable sources. Some examples:

If what I did with Kennedale ISD looks OK, I'll try to keep adding similar sections to other Texas high schools / school districts. --Hebisddave (talk) 14:57, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, every school and district should have a section on demographics. I always title it "Demographics". My preference would be to not include standardized test results there. If covered in an article (the utility of which would be a seperate discussion), test results should be under "Academics". Independent sources should be used. Here is where we get into difficulties. In most cases, there are choices for which source to use. As it gives information in standard format for almost every school public and private across the whole country, I prefer stats to be sourced to the NCES; however, the state DOE generally (not sure for Texas) also conveniently reports demographic info. The rub with using the state figure is that some will report current year figures but most are one or two years behind. NCES is across the board two years behind, allowing level field comparisons to be made. The most up to date figure shouldn't be our priority, as we are not a reporter of news. WP:MOS seems to discourage the use of markup tables for small groups of numbers that need to be frequently changed, a grouping into which school demographics fall. I find a combo of bullet lists and prose work the best (see example). As school articles are frequently where the newest editors cut their teeth, we prefer to keep the editing skills simple. Please do add demographics to as many schools as you can. It's good solid info. Thanks, Hebisddave. John from Idegon (talk) 16:18, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you! That's exactly what I needed. I'll look at adjusting the couple articles I already did, and follow this moving forward. --Hebisddave (talk) 14:06, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Proposed merge

Please see talk:Emerson Middle School (New Jersey)#Requested move 11 January 2017. It looks as if this might not be a clear cut case, so as much participation as possible is requested.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:56, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Given the results of this move, the other former high school in the district should also have the article moved from Union Hill Middle School back to Union Hill High School and the content adjusted accordingly. Exact same issues as with Emerson. --JonRidinger (talk) 14:43, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Yup. John from Idegon (talk) 15:09, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

"Friends Central Select" in Philadelphia

(See Talk:Philadelphia Public League § Friends Central? Friends Select?)

Philadelphia Public League § Members mentions "Friends Central Select" as one of the most notable private schools in the Philadelphia Interscholastic League in the first decade of the 20th century. Philadelphia today has Friends' Central School and Friends Select School, but no Friends Central Select School. Was that ancestral to either of these? If so, it should be linked, and mention made of that earlier name in the school's article.--Thnidu (talk) 06:25, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, the section you mention seems to be a copyright violation to "Friends+Central+Select"&source=bl&ots=k7tpRRq609&sig=BCVLYQXbnkGwUzVZIIKTrOfAQMc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij3-r9nNrRAhUI42MKHYmmA18Q6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=%22Friends%20Central%20Select%22&f=false this book, but the book may have copied us. Suggest you dig a bit deeper. The book I just mentioned is about the only other Google hit I got for "Friends Central Select". Both schools have extant websites, so I doubt they've merged. The article in question frankly stinks. Suggest you be bold and fix it. An article on an athletic conference that does not even list its members is a pretty poor article. If you decide to do that, please reference your work. If earlier editors had done even a poor job of that, perhaps the answers you seek would be clearer. John from Idegon (talk) 07:23, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

School notability RfC

An RfC is taking place at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC on secondary school notability. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:22, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  • The RFC has been closed. I encourage you to read the full summary (using the link Kudpung shared), but one particular result may affect this project's work: "Secondary schools are not presumed to be notable simply because they exist." --Hebisddave (talk) 14:17, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
This opens a totally new can of worms. Can we have a sub-page that defines school notability then lists and suggests which references should be given to restore notability to each secondary school before we have haemorrhaging of experienced editors. The policy documents at present are full of circular references and at the critical points noticeable vague.
No secondary school in the UK is without a detailed Ofsted report which is available online (Ofsted being independant), all schools that are managed by an LEA and are discussed in the publically accessible education committee reports that are each scrutinied nationally, and their outcomes are published in national media. All schools placed job advertisements for senior posts in the Times Education Supplement- a weekly journal of international repute. These three alone provide the elements that are used. The government encourages parents to refer to officially compiled school league table before applying. Thats a fourth. The academies and private jobbies have even more press coverage when they do the conversion, and send returns that are published by the DFE (maybe after a lengthy FoI request) So can we have some of this put on a guide sheet- so we are prepared before the flood of Speedies start.
This done we can extrapolate the work to cover the rest of the EU, then the former colonies and empires of those countries. That should cover most- then we can do the ones we have missed.ClemRutter (talk) 22:24, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello,
Please note that Secondary school, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing!
Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:08, 6 February 2017 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

I have looked at that article and it is a basket case- a jumble or hotchpotch of disjointed mini-essays. It was like that before and it is now. It can be improved by splitting into satellite articles which will remove about 95% of the text and then we can write some decent prose on the theory of secondary educatioh, and the implementations, the curriculums, the economics of secondary education and how this influences the school its self. But before I go any further-- is anyone actually interested? ClemRutter (talk) 22:39, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
I have now glanced at Secondary education which is another nonsensical disaster area 95% unreferenced- and Comprehensive school is needing a rewrite. Secondary modern school actually is a readable and referenced article. ClemRutter (talk) 10:15, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Sunnyside Elementary School

The article Sunnyside Elementary School has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Article fails to meet WP:NSCHOOL

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page. G Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 05:47, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Redirected to the community article. John from Idegon (talk) 06:30, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Would it make sense to redirect the school to Chula Vista Elementary School District, which appears to be the parent organization? (I'm honestly not sure which is preferred.) --Hebisddave (talk) 14:10, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
My bad. The school district for sure. John from Idegon (talk) 18:11, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Help needed at Kingston College (England)

Hello everyone, I was wondering if anyone on the project could help cleanup the above article and expand to it. The article had been in a rather poor state and had lots of unsourced and promotional material contained when I stumbled upon it and was under threat of being nominated for deletion if another editor had seen it. But I have now gone through and removed the promotional content and sourced content which sources were available for and added come cite needed templates for content which required a source. However, the article may still require expansion and more cleanup, which is why I've brought this to attention as an expert on the subject could look into it more (I'm no expert on schools). Much appreciated. Class455 (talk|stand clear of the doors!) 22:11, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I have had a brief glance. I did a hop over to MidKent College to do a comparison. The bare-bones are there but it is a matter of tone. It passes notability- but certainly not wiki-notability at the moment. Google for independent, secondary sources. Ofsted is one https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/files/862281/urn/130448.pdf and local newspapers though not the most reliable are a good start. ocn- is a company the validates qualification and produces a directory of potential service providers. http://www.ocnlondon.org.uk/access-to-he/access-to-he-course-directory/kingston-college.aspx gives a well written description- so helps to establish WP:GNG and the material is literate. That will give a few starting points. --ClemRutter (talk) 23:51, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Rfc: List of Mahinda College alumni

Please comment here. Another editor is hoping to take this list to WP:FL.--Obi2canibe (talk) 17:39, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Proposed renaming of Chinese school categories

Hi! In Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_March_16 I proposed renaming the cats Category:Middle schools in China and Category:High schools in China to "Junior secondary schools in China" and "Senior secondary schools in China". Knowing from personal experience and from looking at websites of Chinese schools I know a Chinese person would be confused by the current English names of the categories (in China a "middle school" does not mean the same thing that it does in the U.S.!) - It's better to be clear and unambiguous about which levels the categories cover.

Since many Chinese secondary schools (中学 xhongxue) have both junior secondary and senior secondary levels, there will be a lot of overlap. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:05, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Makes sense, I think you should go ahead and rename them. If I remember correctly the Chinese system is 6-3-3 which, with the existing titles, would cause confusion with readers.

Whsun808 (talk) 03:17, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Allegations made about former staff in UK schools.

Twice in the last month I have deleted sections where great prominence has been made about former members of staff at a school. To my reading this breached WP:BLP and presumptions of privacy. here and here. Can we make it more explicit in the guidelines, that the article is on the school and not just a home for one off court cases involving former members of staff- which gain undue prominence and are negative to the reputation of the school. In both cases the offence took place outside the premises of the school, and outside the jurisdiction of the governors. From the point of view of school they both followed standard practice and did not hinder the investigation when it would have become a notable fact.

Once this slur has been placed in the article it is incredibly difficult to remove it, and it will be opposed by the editor who is looking for a spot to include some local news that is important to him. The folk watching the page: governors, staff and parents will be accused of breaching WP:COI.

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/Article_guidelines#What_not_to_include would seem to be the appropriate place to insert the advice. I can suggest some wording but would prefer that members of the project, reflect on the problem and present the first proposals. --ClemRutter (talk) 10:37, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

This might be new on that side of the pond, but it's old hat over here. It's clearly WP:NOTNEWS content. Since a core policy already covers it, I'm not clear on how a change to guidelines would be helpful. However, if you feel something should be added to the guidelines, WP:BEBOLD and add it. And if you need help with any particular article, add a neutral discussion notification here and others can help you. John from Idegon (talk) 16:59, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
 Done. ClemRutter (talk) 19:39, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
That seems quite appropriate. Thanks to you, ClemRutter. John from Idegon (talk) 09:30, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Repeated addition of unsourced defamatory claims on Shane English School article

Hi, I wonder if we can have a few more eyes on the Shane English School article, as for past week or so, it has been subject to repeated attempts by an ip-hopping editor to add unsourced defamatory claims. I've requested temporary page protection (for a second time), but that won't stop SPAs created to continue re-adding unsourced material. Thanks. --DAJF (talk) 09:23, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be simplest just to delete the article? None of the Saxoncourt links work and its notability seems very questionable. KJP1 (talk) 09:43, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
According to the company's website, it currently operates over 200 schools within Japan, and it has received national press coverage, so I don't really see notability (or lack of) being an issue here. I agree that the existing sourcing needs to be improved with more third-party sources, and I'll tag the dead links for now. --DAJF (talk) 10:59, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
In the context of language schools in Asia, it seems neither notable, nor large. There are literally tens of thousands of such institutions. The Wiki entry for the parent group, Saxoncourt, is currently tagged for both COI and over-reliance on primary sources, namely its own. But, if it is felt to be worth keeping then, yes, please flag the broken links. KJP1 (talk) 12:05, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Sjálandsskóli

Would someone from WPSCH mind taking a look at the recently created Sjálandsskóli and assessing it? My understanding is that elementary schools, unlike high schools, are generally not considered notable for stand alone articles per WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES simply by existing unless they have received coverage in independent reliable sources. Moreover, given the outcome of a recent RFC, it appears that notability guidelines for schools has been tightened up a bit.Anyway, the two sources cited in the article are primary sources which are fine for showing the school exists, but not really helpful in establishing notability. Perhaps a redirect to the town's article Garðabær is appropriate. -- Marchjuly (talk) 15:40, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Saint Andrew's School, Singapore

Would someone from WPSCH mid taking a look at Saint Andrew's School, Singapore, Saint Andrew's Junior School, Saint Andrew's Junior College and Saint Andrew's Secondary School? They all seem to be inter-connected and not all of them may be notable per WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES or WP:GNG. The Junior School article in particular is unsourced and is in pretty bad shape. It also has the look of copy-and-pasted content from an external website. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:51, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

I redirected the article on the junior school to the main article. Elementary schools are rarely ever notable on their own and the article was full of NPOV issues and unsourced content. There's a good chance the article on the secondary school could be merged into the main article too, mostly along the lines of duplicate info. --JonRidinger (talk) 14:45, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks JonRidinger for taking a closer look at these. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:19, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

School notability

Jusy a reminder about the recently closed debate: While an accurate summary, the closure demonstrates that the debate was self-contradictory, meaning in fact that the status quo is basically maintained, ironically as perfectly documented in the non-advice page, WP:OUTCOMES, which sufficient participants guarded against using. Thus the short result is 'no consensus'. Business as usual, therefore, but perhaps we should treat one-liners about fee-paying private schools with more severity, eventually evoking GNG and CSD-G11, after all Wikipedia is not a school directory any more than it is a business yellow pages.

What absolutely must be avoided however, is an avalanche of AfDs of older school articles - there are some deletionists, whom I shall not name, who history has clearly shown have resorted to mass AfD nominations. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:40, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Holy Cross of San Antonio

Editor continues to add unsourced promotional material. I've tried to explain the problems with his edits, gave him a link to the guidelines, explained copyvio, etc but no response. Doug Weller talk 15:48, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Redirections by User:Alexander Iskandar

@Alexander Iskandar: is redirecting very many high school articles without discussion, and without any attempt to merge content. Just Chilling (talk) 16:06, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

New template- Grade- to allow the display of K-12 grades, ages and British school years.

In my ramblings through countless articles while improving Secondary education and Secondary school I found that half of them refer to year groups using K-12 terminology, and the rest use the two British systems. The articles are mutually exclusive. The {{convert}} is used to render SI and Imperial units of weights distances etc- but we had no equivalent. So being bold, and frustrated I have written one- it is called {{grade}}. At its simplest it just provides- K-12 grade to K-12 grade, (age)- and provision is made for plurals.

  • {{Grade|4}} gives: grade 4 (age 9–10)
  • {{Grade|4|plural=yes}} gives: grade 4 (ages 9–10)

Extended we can switch on year groups and the old money names

  • {{Grade|4|plural=yes|yeargroup=true}} gives: grade 4 (ages 9–10), year 5
  • {{Grade|4|plural=yes|yearform=true}} gives: grade 4 (ages 9–10), junior 3

We can change the meaning of the input number to Brit speak and age.

  • {{Grade|4|by-year=true|plural=yes|yearform=true}} gives: grade 3 (ages 9–10), junior 2
  • {{Grade|13|by-year=true|yearform=true}} gives: grade 12 (ages 17–18), upper sixth
  • {{Grade|4|by-age=true|plural=yes|yearform=true}} gives: Pre-K (ages 4–5), reception
  • {{Grade|13|by-age=true|yeargroup=true|yearform=true}} gives: grade 8 (ages 13–14), year 9, third form

As it gets more extended the difficulties in writing it increased, and I have take many executive decisions to get the ball rolling. The only thing that is fixed is the order grade, age and then the britsystem. Technically the structure is simple: a switch within a cascading-if-chain so other systems can be programmed into the source code. I would suggest that if other wording is required this template can be Subst: into the text and the adjustments done manually. I have used the template on part of List of secondary education systems by country- United States for example.

Obviously the {{convert}} template is more sophisticated- as it is programmed in Lua. This template needs to be soak tested and ideas piled onto the talk page. Please do add feedback- but at the moment enjoy. ClemRutter (talk) 22:01, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Excellent, Clem, but my question is: who is going to use it? Many many years ago when I became a coord of this project, and between us, Chris Cooper and I were able to hold the fort, it might just have been doable, but now with tens of thousands of school articles and a very poor performing project membership beyond the active coords, it would be a monumental task. Most school articles are created by drive-by SPA. Lacking cats and project templates, and superficial NPP by raw beginners, many school articles are not even traceable. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:52, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
@Kudpung:Yes- lack of support shows! I took the two articles Secondary education and Secondary school under my wing as they were labelled somewhere as vital articles, They were dire and had opened merger/demerger discussions as well. I started to do some serious changes. At each stage I discussed the proposed changes on the talk page with invitations for comment, and waited.... and I am still waiting. Small articles are easy to de-stub and improve (anyone in grade 9 (age 14–15), year 10 can be trained to do that), personally I am looking at the big generic articles which require restructuring before they become useful. These articles are 'vital': MPs/senators/ministers all use WP as their portal when they are learning a new brief- so without us they are acting in total ignorance. So I envisage using the template for articles on this level- to do retrospective work we may need to commission a bot. I don't see that it wlll be of much use to individual school article or in biographies. So the way forward is to try to use the template as it stands and note difficulties and successes on the talk page and I will make any tweaks I can.
On the general traceability and project template issues- this sounds like a case for the Wikidata crew. Could @Pigsonthewing:(Andy Mabbet) give us some advice? ClemRutter (talk) 09:22, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
@ClemRutter: Can you be more specific about what help you need, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:15, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Popular pages report

We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, Community Tech bot will post at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Archive 25/Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of WikiProject Schools.

We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:

  • The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
  • The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
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We're grateful to Mr.Z-man for his original Mr.Z-bot, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of WikiProject Schools, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Can We Have an 'Owner' Field or Similar for the School Template?

I'm working on the World Hockey Centre page. This page uses the 'Pro hockey team' template but is, in fact, a privately owned school, at least IMO. It occurs to me that there are many such organisations for which there should be a template. Is there an appropriate template, or could we add '| owner = ' to the existing 'school' template? Thanks for your advice. SewerCat (talk) 20:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

A sports camp is not a school. IMO, infobox school would not be appropriate for it, the article is not associated with this project in any way. Ask for assistance at the ice hockey project please. John from Idegon (talk) 23:33, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
@John from Idegon: Thanks, John. That appears to be what I needed to know. SewerCat (talk) 15:00, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
I stumbled across this: Template:Organization_infoboxes. Hopefully that will give some possibilities if you can't find something more specific to a sports camp. --Hebisddave (talk) 13:06, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
If not, you could probably make the generic Template:Infobox work for you. John from Idegon (talk) 17:27, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
@John from Idegon: Thanks, John. At the very least, much better than what's there at present. SewerCat (talk) 18:47, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

It seems like an appropriate field to include for the wave of political motivated wave of Academies and Free schools that is sweeping across the UK. Something like 

|owner
|owner_field-caption (default Owner)

It could be rendering after the type field, which is the only place to insert the information at the moment. If you consider Nottingham Free School, nowhere in the infobox does it mention Torch Academy Gateway Trust.

These fields would give the flexibility to add

Owner :Ripem off plc
Academy chain: Blue sky beau lucks
Sponsoring school: St Theresa's

or

Worshipful Company: fishmongers and hairdressers

And this is simple to code, and with a table in either field an image of the companies logo could be added too. Just a thought. ClemRutter (talk) 20:53, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Infobox rendering

I am on a roll- has anyone looked at how the Website field is rendering- most schools use a website address of over 24 characters while this field allows 20 !? ClemRutter (talk) 20:53, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Do the extra characters not just go to the next line? EyeTripleE (talk) 02:26, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Template:url should be used. Note that if certain characters are present in the website address, it must be coded ({{url|1=website address}}). Using this template prevents the url from "stretching" the infobox and causes it to simply continue on the next line. John from Idegon (talk) 04:33, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

European Schools - Creating a school type infobox

I'm trying to improve the wikipedia article on the European Schools. The page currently uses the "school" infobox, though this is not accurate. It is, in fact, an international non-governmental organisation, created by an international treaty, (distinct from the EU, though the EU has signed up to the treaty). It runs 14 separate "European Schools" (each with their own wiki page), and is also responsible for accrediting certain other sc. I started messing around in my sandbox with the various infoboxes out there, in the hope that I could embed the international treaty infobox, into the organisation infobox, or use the school district infobox. I've run into some problems though: the treaty infobox doesn't embed properly, and the schools district infobox is way too US focused.

A lot of this got me thinking on whether there could be a "school type" infobox. I looked through the pages on different school systems, like the "Montessori" schools etc, and no one has yet created a good way of formatting the relevant information across the pages. I don't have the skills to do this, but would be willing to help.

Separately, the sister school label in the schools infobox is currently only available as singular. Each of the European schools officially has the other 13 as its "sister schools". Is there a way that a plural option could be added for this label? EU explained (talk) 05:45, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't recommend trying to use the treaty infobox in the school article anyway. The treaty should either have its own article or should have more details in the current history section. Although it's an NGO, one option might be Template:Infobox government agency since it functions as such. A school district is largely an American term and practice, hence the template being US-centric, but I think the template could work in that article since there are "free" labels. There are also other options for the school district template that could be modified to give the infobox a little more flexibility, similar to the flexibility the schools infobox has.
I also wouldn't list the European Schools in the infobox as "sister schools". A sister school is generally for instances where one school is all the same gender (an all boys school has an all girls school as a "sister school" for instance) or there is some other working relationship between the schools outside of being in the same district or under the same oversight. In other words, we don't list all the other high schools in the same school district as "sister schools", for instance. It seems to be similar to how Brigham Young University has "sister schools" in Brigham Young University–Idaho, Brigham Young University–Hawaii, and LDS Business College. They're all under the same administration (Church Educational System) and there is obviously a connection (but they aren't satellite or branch campuses), but since they all part of CES, there's no reason to list them as sister schools in an infobox. Same would go for the European Schools; there's already a full listing later in the European Schools article (I would recommend instead of just listing the country to have a "location" column instead to show what city each school is located in) and a European Schools navbox at the bottom of that article and each individual school article. --JonRidinger (talk) 15:50, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Belfry High School (Belfry, Kentucky)

I've been travelling the last week, and will be doing so again this coming week ... I wanted to request someone familiar with this guideline help to review Belfry High School (Belfry, Kentucky) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ... my primary concerns are in the sections Athletics and Clubs and organizations that were recently added to the article. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:50, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

The detail seems somewhat excessive and the lists could be more compactly presented as tables. EyeTripleE (talk) 02:14, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
I removed most of the obvious excessive details such as the mentions of current coaches, regions, minor championships, etc. I agree with the above they could be better presented in tables, though I honestly think the mention of every club at a school is over the top. --JonRidinger (talk) 03:11, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Discussions of interest to this project

There is a discussion at Talk:Lakewood High School (Lake Odessa, Michigan)#Weight and BLP issues that may be of interest to this project. Your comments are welcome. John from Idegon (talk) 20:50, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Amina Girls' National School Matale

An article that you have been involved in editing—Amina Girls' National School Matale—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Cordless Larry (talk) 21:48, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Notability of Scheppersinstituut Mechelen

I encountered Scheppersinstituut Mechelen in my rounds and was wondering what your thoughts on it were. It is a stub without any references. A quick google search did indicate that such a school does indeed exist, however, Google lists it as an Elementary school, not a secondary one as the article suggests. I was able to find a notability policy about high schools but nothing regarding elementary schools. I figured that this would be the best page to inquire, seeing as the project is devoted to schools. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 15:51, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

There's a Dutch Wikipedia article which Google translates as both primary and secondary. Perhaps someone with Dutch language skills might be interested in translating/merging? Cheers! — Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 17:24, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, it looks like an all-through school with additional FE facilities. There seems to be a chain of mistranslation at Google- they do refer to it as a Primary school but the nl: website refers to it as a Basis school which went to a Basic school later-- and somewhere that was Basic level so Primary school. It certainly has 18 yr old pupils according to the photos. If someone has time, working on both the nl: and the en: article would be interesting. Do either have a Wikidata Q number. ClemRutter (talk) 17:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Navbox template with doomed links

While stub-sorting I found Webb Bridge Middle School. Non-notable non-high school, unsourced except for an inline link to its own website. I thought of redirecting it to Fulton County School System, but that article doesn't include a list of individual schools so the redirect wouldn't have been useful.

But I did notice the school district's massive template {{Fulton County School System}}. It includes links to every high school and also many of the middle and elementary schools. Some of these are redirects pointing to Fulton County School System, some are red links. It doesn't seem useful to link any of them. But I'm no expert on schools, especially US school systems, so I just bring this to your attention. It looks to me as if a "List of Schools in Fulton County System", to which there could be redirects from the elementary and middle schools, would be a whole lot more useful. PamD 12:53, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I did go ahead and redirect the middle school to the district, as the school is definitely not notable and the district article can be improved. No time to look at the template right now. John from Idegon (talk) 14:19, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
I don't think that's what nav templates were really designed for. For one thing, as pointed out by PamD, there are a lot of red linked schools which will never have articles. To bring Fulton County School System in line with most of our other school district articles, I suggest that the template should be converted to a list in the Fulton System page, or if doing that it looks too long, make the new page as suggested by Pam: List of schools in Fulton County School System. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:15, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

School Article Guidelines

A couple of months ago ClemRutter raised some questions regarding the page at WP:WPSCH/AG. We are now entering a phase where, as discussed this week (in French) at Wikimania, schools are running 'Wikipedia editing projects', which invariably start with students being asked to collectively write an article about their own school.

The School Article Guidelines were written at a time when there were only four or five Wikipedias. The Internet had not yet spread to the desert or the jungle, and most people writing articles were native (or very near native) speakers of English. A glance at today's flood of new articles will show quite clearly that all that has changed. Nowadays, relatively few new articles are being created on schools in the traditional English L1 regions, while as Internet accessibility expands, we are now welcoming many articles about schools in Africa and Asia and other places where English is not the main language - or is even barely used at all by the majority of the population.

These articles are very often sub-standard, so our AG now needs to be written in a graded language that most contributors to the en.Wiki can understand. Unfortunately, not even native speakers find these advice pages anyway. That is not our fault however. It's the resistance of those who govern the presentation and development of Wikipedia's start and entry pages to making it easier to channel new prospective article creators to places where they can get help before they start.

Changes are now on the horizon. A 6-month experiment under the auspices of the WMF will now be conducted by the community, after which there will be some serious discussion about redesign of the way in which new users are received, and the design of the entrance 'lobby'. If you have any ideas how we can also improve the experience for creators of school articles, please do not hesitate to share them with us here. If you do, please ping me or John from Idegon. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:51, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Is there a link to the French discussion- I am sorry to have missed it. ClemRutter (talk) 13:03, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nszpaIBmDwY slides are in English. AFAIK there is no transcript. Québecois can be a challenge even to native speakers of European French, but you can always stop and rewind. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:49, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Yarra Valley Grammar

Was wondering if someone would mind taking a look at Yarra Valley Grammar and assessing it. It's been around for a long time and it seems as if over the years its drifted towards being more of a PR piece for the school than an encyclopedic article about the school. I've done a little clean up, but there's probably more that needs to be done. I'm also not sure whether elementary schools are considered to be notable simply because they exist. Anyway, any comments and suggestions would be appreciated. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:36, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Brentwood Academy - Gross Vandalism and Copyright Violations

By way of COI disclosure, my name is Susan and I work with Brentwood Academy.

I want to call this group's attention to gross violations of WP:VANDAL and WP:COPYVIO on the Brentwood Academy article.

An IP (207.14.224.3) has substantially lifted content from this article to focus it primarily on a lawsuit against our headmaster and other administrators.

Obviously this reflects a very serious charge. However, we believe that the Wikipedia page about our school is not the place to prosecute the case or promote the views of any party in this matter. All that we ask is that, to the degree that this topic is discussed in the context of our nearly fifty year history, that it is treated even-handedly. – Susan — Preceding unsigned comment added by SusanS1969 (talk • contribs) 13:39, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I have removed the controversial material. I have returned the article to a clean version. Mavens may wish to decide/discuss how to cover this, if at all, at the article Talk page. -Roxy the dog. bark 13:56, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
Many thanks for your help here. -- Susan — Preceding unsigned comment added by SusanS1969 (talk • contribs) 15:59, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
Roxy the dog, who are these "Mavens" you speak of? Odds are that unless this gets serious ongoing widespread coverage, we will not be covering it, and even if it does, how much can we say unless or until this is settled at trial? You're an admin, ya? Why no warning to the IP (which has a long history)? Are you going to rev Del the copyvio or should we contact another admin? John from Idegon (talk) 16:08, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
User:John from Idegon I'm not an admin. (and we are all Mavens)-Roxy the dog. bark 17:08, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
SusanS1969, there is no question you are what we refer to as a WP:PAID editor and we appreciate your upfront unprompted disclosures. However, please read the linked guideline for paid editors, as you are not quite in compliance yet. Also, edit requests (which the above is) need to appear on the article talk page, but I completely understand the urgency of this one. Note that the content was removed not because the school asked it be removed, but because it was in violation of a strict policy (actually two, WP:BLP and WP:COPYRIGHT). Thanks for your cooperation. I have added the school's article to my watch list. John from Idegon (talk) 16:36, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I will work to get in compliance.SusanS1969 (talk) 18:25, 23 August 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SusanS1969 (talk • contribs) 16:54, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

  • Edits oversighted. Eyes on the article are appreciated. It need a lot of work. John from Idegon (talk) 20:22, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

School articles without WPSCH banners

How can we locate school articles where the WPWPSCH banner is missing from the talk page? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:28, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Reporting of scandalous / short-term / news etc on schools

Do we have a guideline on the inclusion of news-type content in schools articles? The particular thing that has made me think of it is mentioned at Talk: Cambridge International School, Cambridge, where your advice would be welcome. (Allegedly-dodgy acting headteacher in court; should it be in the article? How to avoid conflict with possibly single-purpose editors?) However, that's just a one-off so I'd be much more interested in knowing if we have protocols for this stuff, which is well outside my usual comfort zone here. Apologies if it is a stupid FAQ and the answer is right in front of my nose: please tolerate the elderly and confused. I'll also mention this - the specific school - at WP:WPSCH/H. Thanks and best wishes to all DBaK (talk) 11:27, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I once tried to add an article about a lawsuit to Liberty University's article and had WP:UNDUE quoted at me. I decided they were right (although I think it would have been opposed whatever), and that could be the main issue. Signed, the elderly and hopefully not too confused Doug Weller talk 15:22, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Doug Weller, universities are covered by their own WikiProject and have their own guidelines. This project is about secondary schools and the very few primary schools that are notable. DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered, there are several factors in play as to why we do not include content like that. First, Wikipedia wide we try not to talk about court appearances, indictments, etc, but instead limit discussion to settled legal matters when it concerns non notable people. And unless it is covered by geographically disperse sources over an extended period of time, it's WP:NOTNEWS. Further, per school article guidelines, we try to limit discussion of issues that have little to no interest outside the local community. And yes, generally it is also UNDUE. John from Idegon (talk) 17:04, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
{{re|John from Idegon]] Yep, I know that this is a school in the UK sense, but I the policy applies to all articles. And yes, we'd often, maybe usually, wait for a case to be settled. And yes, if it wasn't of interest to the local community then it probably shouldn't be included. Doug Weller talk 19:15, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
  • I'll repeat what I posted o the article talk page:

I would think we would probably not want this in the article. This is not an 'in school' occurence as much as one would like to use Wikipedia to expose it. As an encyclopedia we should be writing about the school and not about what its staff or pupils do that is not directly concerned with the school itself. The only connections in this case are that a school was the man's workplace and a 'child' was involved. The offense, the result of a sting operation, did not take place at the school and the 'child' was not one of its pupils. IMO, keep scandals for the newspapers bearing in mind WP:NOTNEWS .

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:36, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I have strongly commented on the Talk: Cambridge International School, Cambridge page, and commented out the text pending the result of the discussion. ClemRutter (talk) 21:53, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Wakeland High School

Similar problem here. @Kudpung and ClemRutter:. John got reported incorrectly to 3RR for reverting similar materisl. Doug Weller talk 21:06, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Doug Weller, I think a removal of this content would be more than adequately covered by WP:BALASP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:30, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Hey all, but especially Kudpung, my availability until mid next week is going to be very spotty. Besides enjoying my annual end of summer holiday with my son, my home place is going to be flooded with visitors starting tomorrow for the total eclipse. Our normal area population is supposed to swell from its normal 30,000 to approx. 150,000. Since my net access is via 4G cellphone, the increased traffic on the limited number of cell sites is probably going to eliminate that. Thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 05:13, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
I have re-read WP:BLP and the intention is clear, but not specific enough to stop an ip with deep involvement in an incident from interpreting it differently. In Wakeland it was clear that an IP went in with a specific purpose to victimise (WP:AVOIDVICTIM) two marginal connected (WP:NPF) persons known for one event(WP:BLP1E). We need a simple statement, that is easily understood and a simple template to apply. (WP:BLP1E) looked promising, but only applies to full articles and is policy so changing it is above my paygrade. See the line We should generally avoid having an article on a person when each of three conditions is met and look at a change to We should generally avoid having an article on a person when each of three conditions is met, and avoid insert a fact into an article where they are not the subject. And I would like to see a restriction put on anonymous or new editors, after the first RR.
John from Idegon Enjoy your eclipse. --ClemRutter (talk) 07:50, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Park Tudor School

And again at the above. John from Idegon (talk) 21:11, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red November contest open to all


Announcing Women in Red's November 2017 prize-winning world contest

Contest details: create biographical articles for women of any country or occupation in the world: November 2017 WiR Contest

Read more about how Women in Red is overcoming the gender gap: WikiProject Women in Red

(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list)

--Ipigott (talk) 07:33, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Criminal activities in schools

People are increasingly adding information to school articles about criminal activity by students, staff, or school employees. Please note that Wikipedia must be a neutral article about a school. Its purpose is not to bring shame to educational institutions. Any such additions will be removed by the School Project coordinators or any other editor. The fact that such activities may be reported in the press is no business of an encyclopedia. Please see WP:BLPCRIME. Persistent reinsertion of such content may result in sanctions for the editor. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:39, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Confusion about what is and isn't notable

So I've read wp:NSCHOOLS, wp:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, and wp:SCH/AG, and I'm still not certain about what is considered notable. The first states that all schools must satisfy the general notability guideline and/or the organization guideline, but the second simply states that middle schools and elementary schools are often not notable. And the latter is only an essay, not a policy. From my observation, it appears that somebody decided a long time ago that all public high schools are automatically notable, and all middle and elementary schools are not. At least that's how the encyclopedia seems to operate. If by "reliable sources," most people include just newspaper articles, then of course there is "significant coverage in reliable sources" for all high schools. Most are about athletic events and academic accomplishments that most people could care less about. Common sense tells me that doesn't make them "notable." It does make sense that high schools are more notable than middle schools, but there are some that I don't know should have their own article. Maybe a section in the school district article or corresponding city/county article. And there are a few public elementary and middle schools that probably satisfy WP:GNG and WP:ORG through more than just newspaper articles about sports games and academic accomplishments. What really brings me here is something I'm planning to do. I'm planning to add information about the history of some schools I am familiar with when I get access to reliable sources. I also plan to maybe request the upload of a few photos. But I'm not so sure if that is notable or not. I don't want to sound like I'm self-promoting any school. The only source for one claim I've found for one of the schools is in an obituary, but I'm sure that's not acceptable. 146.229.240.200 (talk) 07:44, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

It is an interesting point you have raised- and I am sure I can welcome you to the project on behalf of all Wikimedians. Personally, I welcome anyone who can help in making policy and reality come closer together. So I will start by being blunt. Edit under a Username not under an IP address. The talk page is your most important tool, and regular editors will often take discussions from article talk page to a user talkpage. There are project newsletters you can sign up to that are sent there, and I park a link or reference on a collaborators tp.
The wikipedia term notable just means it can be found in reliable secondary sources, not that it has done something special (notable in common usage).
We are editing from both sides of the pond (hello NSW) with two/three systems of education. Policy has to be blended to fit all. From a UK perspective, the rule of thumb is Keystage 1 and Keystage 2 schools are rarely notable, but schools delivering Keystage 3 and Keystage 4 almost always are. Under the UK system all schools must submit to OFSTED inspection (primary source) which will include a potted history of the school (secondary)- this must be published and is commented on in local media (secondary source- perhaps not reliable). This does suggest that it is possible to write an article on a small school for very young children. To us the normal cut off age between KS2 and KS3 is eleven. Middle schools 8-13, 9-14 (officially:middle schools deemed primary/middle schools deemed secondary)in the UK have almost all been restructured, and removed. The US term, middle school- which used to be Junior High School are definitely over the cut off age. ISCED 2011 is relevant here.
I raised this issue on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Article guidelines/Archive 2#ISCED international standards on 1 November 2017, I have had no comments. So it is a case of WP:BRD, go ahead and do, expect to be reverted and than enter into meaningful discussion and that moves the project on. ClemRutter (talk) 11:08, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
Hi, 146 etc. I echo Clem's sentiments about getting an account. I will add one thing. What you add to an existing article is not affected by Notability guidelines. Notability is only the standard for what independent subjects can have an article. What goes into an existing article is dictated by consensus. Guidelines do represent a broad consensus, but can be overruled in a local basis. To do so, however requires both good sources and a good argument. Some examples of bad arguments include WP:OTHERSTUFF and WP:ILIKEIT. Sorry for the vague answer, but for a non specific question, it's the best I can do. And this really isn't the place for a more specific question. Again, Clem nailed that too. Make a bold edit and deal with it on the article talk page. Thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 12:17, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. For questions about specific schools, as well as other actions I actually have posted on talk pages, although I doubt anyone will ever see some of them. I would get an account, but I've been editing this encyclopedia on and off for well over ten years, and had accounts over the years, all of which I lost the password to (and one of which was hacked). This isn't the place for that, though. Although I don't know that a lot of the schools I have seen are notable (since most "reliable sources" are about athletic events that everyone will forget about in the next year, etc.) I'll see what I can do when I need to. This isn't my expert area, I just don't know that I've ever seen a school article that doesn't have lots of issues. 146.229.240.200 (talk) 18:56, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
@146. Well that's a step forward- you have had an account in the past and it is now matter of forgetting the password- I can't remember where I have just parked the car and as for where I put the keys! That is important because I have written my wiki password on them as a reminder! If you had got an account it would have helped me last night when I would have trawled back to discover your objections. Since you were last on I have had a go at wp:SCH/AG and [[Talk:wp:SCH/AG]]. This question of Wikipedia:Notability as distinct from Collins dictionary notability has been bugging me, as it is often raised in training sessions- and frankly our response is poor. So I started on that essay, took your comments on board and did a bit of WP:BRD- and I am waiting for opinion and discussion.
We have two FA schools, and as I edit from the UK, I took wp:SCH/AG The Judd School as a model. This is a state-funded school, though unusual, due to also having some paying pupils. From that I put together the list of what to include. Using memory loss as a virtue, I came back to the list and I am trying to correct Fortismere School which is a state-funded foundation school- a standard North London Comp.(ISCED 2-3) I can't comment on US schools but they seem to be bigger on reporting Extra-curricular activities than Curriculum- and as you can see from the table most school articles are between stub and start, or pathetic to dire!
All WP articles are supposed to be targeted at non-specialists, so your critical judgement is prized. I haven't written this anywhere before but I have a personal test- the Lake Wobegon test. After reading the article would one of Garrison Keillor's characters feel he understood that school? The definitions of notability are contradictory- and with your help we can attempt to clarify the issue once and for all
It doesn't actually matter as, UK side any school ISCED 2-3 is presumed Wiki-notable, and though ISCED 1 schools primary schools are presumed not to be, 180 or so have proved that they are. UK side, every state-funded school is inspected by an outside body, OFSTED, that writes a description of the school in the independent report (secondary source). The school responds (primary source) in a letter to parents. These are published on line. These reports are picked up by local papers some are WP:RS providing a second (secondary source). That applies to nursery, primary, secondary. If a school is an academy, they have to publish their their annual governors report (primary) and audited accounts(secondary)- the auditor is another WP:RS secondary source. This really is enough for WS:GNG. Private schools must file company reports- but they don't really concern me. Now writing the article just using these sources would make a very dull article. Within the article we just need references. Not every statement needs to be Notable.
Will you look over the articles I have mentioned, WP:SCH/AG, Fortismere, please and make some incisive comments. ClemRutter (talk) 20:23, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello,
Please note that Schoolwork, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing!
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List of schools for people on the autistic spectrum

I'm not happy about this list. Even where there are sources, does that mean it's actually a suitable schools? It seems particularly important that if we are to have such a list that readers can find articles on the schools. I realise that we aren't trying to do that, but many readers will think that these schools must be good if they are on this list. Doug Weller talk 14:59, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

As long as it's tightly focused on institutions that explicitly have a mission to serve students in this spectrum then I don't see any particular problems with it. It might be desirable to place some additional qualifiers for inclusion in the list or information in the article e.g., only list accredited schools or include whether schools are accredited. ElKevbo (talk) 15:05, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
I share Doug's concerns. Firstly all the institutions mentioned in the UK are private schools.The local authority has a duty to make provision for students SEN in a mainstream school, in every LEA there are networks of state schools who arrange provision for students with ECP/ ENCPs."Children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND): Extra help - GOV.UK". www.gov.uk. Retrieved 30 November 2017. is the government portal. There are specialist units (Private) everywhere set up by former specialist teacher that educate some of the extreme cases- taking 10-20 students, these are entered by a referral detailed on the individuals ECP. A unit of 20 kids is far too small for a WP article, but they will have been inspected by OFSTED so that is automatically be one WP:RS.("Ofsted Report Blue Skies -Medway" (PDF). Blue skies school. Ofsted. Retrieved 30 November 2017.. DoI a former colleague) Looked at it in this light, this list seems to be an elaborate form of product placement. I have no objection to using a primary source to full out detail in an article, but to establish Notability we need a good secondary source (viz OFSTED). As the sole source for placing a commercial organisation in a list- I don't believe it is good enough. --ClemRutter (talk) 20:38, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
I concede that there may be significant WP:N and WP:DUE issues that preclude the existence of this list. I am not an expert in this particular field nor K-12 education in general so I am happy to concede to colleagues who are more knowledgeable. ElKevbo (talk) 21:30, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Which NCES numbers?

When listing a school's total enrollment, we frequently cite NCES enrollment data. For PK-12 schools, should we use the "Total Students" field or "Non-Prekindergarten Total Students" field? See, for example [1]] Billhpike (talk) 18:52, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

The reason there are two numbers is that pre-K students are not considered students for federal revenue distribution. Money for PreK if there is any comes from preschool educational funding (i.e. Headstart). Department of Agriculture funding for feeding programs is distributed for all students, regardless of eligibility for educational funds. Many if not most private schools receive Department of Agriculture funds for their feeding programs, even tho they received no ED funds. The demographics numbers from NCES only includes K-12 students, but total enrollment is tracked for feeding programs.
So, after that long winded explanation, the total number of students should be included in the Infobox, where the grades field should specify that there are preK students. In the demographics section, it should be specified that Pre K is excluded (eg, "The K-12 enrollment for 2014-2015 was x.) John from Idegon (talk) 23:09, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the comprehensive explanation. Billhpike (talk) 04:43, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
Great clear explanation- where does a visiting editor find this advice? (Other than here) Which help file details this? The lack of documentation is becoming a personal obsession-and the lack of indexing of manuals, help files and essays? Schools are important starting points for inquisitive young potential editors- and they need more rather than less (even hand-holding) documentation. ClemRutter (talk) 10:01, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
Should this advice be wrapped into a maintenance template? ClemRutter (talk) 10:01, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Comment by Kudpung

  • New articles about US (and UK) schools have become extremely rare although it is unlikely that all schools in the country have been documented. All the school articles we receive now are mainly from South Asia, and that's a different story and one where we need to enlist the help of our Indian editors. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:14, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject

Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Schools

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.— Rod talk 18:34, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Stuyvesant High School#Copy editing

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Stuyvesant High School#Copy editing.

This is a Featured Article that needs a lot of copy editing and referencing fixes. I would preferably not want to send this article to Featured Article Review, but unless these issues are fixed, I will send this article to FAR. epicgenius (talk) 17:33, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Asking for reassessment

Carver High School (Phoenix, Arizona) was assessed 6 years ago, and I have expanded and improved the article in recent months. I was wondering if anyone can reassess the article, in light of the improvements? Kiteinthewind Leave a message! 03:20, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Also, Phoenix Union High School was expanded and improved. Can we reassess that one as well? Kiteinthewind Leave a message! 03:25, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Hi, Kiteinthewind. I'll take a look at them soon, but in the future, if you have assessment requests, please add them to the list at WP:WPSCH/A. Thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 18:52, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

privateschoolreview.com

Many school articles use privateschoolreview.com as a source. This website charges schools a fee to be listed [2]. In my view, this website amounts to advertising for the school and is not a WP:RS. Even for the most uncontroversial claims, the schools website is a better source than a third party marketing website. I’m prepared to start pruning this website from articles, but I want to make sure we have a consensus first. Billhpike (talk) 02:16, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Please feel free to remove this site; it's clearly unreliable. The proliferation of low quality websites that masquerade as high quality sources of information, especially those that function primarily as lead generators, is a huge problem that we're not handling very well. ElKevbo (talk) 03:46, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. I'd put greatschools.com in the same category. Also niche.com John from Idegon (talk) 05:48, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes, go ahead and remove them. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:51, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I saw that Billhpike had been doing some of the pruning of references to PSR and had left the following on his talk page, which I am pasting here with some modifications:

I was looking at another edit where the edit summary stated a PrivateSchoolReview.com source had been pruned, but this edit to Tucson Hebrew Academy with the edit summary "PrivateSchoolReview.com publishes information provided by schools and is thus not a reliable source. Use NCES for enrollment data" is more comprehensive in describing the purpose of these edits.

I agree that NCES data is always preferable to PrivateSchoolReview, but ultimately both sources are getting their data from the schools themselves. While I would always prefer the NCES data -- and I have added it to probably more than 1,000 articles, public and private -- sometimes the NCES does not have data for a private school, as with Gloucester County Christian School and Tucson Hebrew Academy. Some of these private schools have data in sporadic years and some never seem to have data on NCES, perhaps a boycott by some schools.

Why not use PSR in places like these and other such articles where NCES enrollment data is not available? In both cases -- NCES and PSR -- it comes directly from the school, and I can assure you that no one from NCES is counting students by age, race and school lunch status. The articles for Gloucester County Christian School and Tucson Hebrew Academy now have no source whatsoever to support enrollment data; is that better than using PSR as a less-than-ideal reference, perhaps with a tag indicating that a better source should be provided from NCES or from official state data? Alansohn (talk) 16:07, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Actually, NCES data is reported by the state DOE from information reported by the school. At least one more layer of potential auditing. NCES data for private schools come from reports they file with a trade association. So yes, I agree that for the very limited use of verifying enrollment when no better source is available (some states also require private schools to report enrollment - California for one), PSR would be simply ok. I wouldn't remove it but I would look at it with some doubt. John from Idegon (talk) 18:57, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
I generally agree with @John from Idegon:. PSR may be of use when demographic information is not available from either NCES or the school’s website. BTW, NCES data from private schools is reported via this questionnaire.Billhpike (talk) 19:13, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

So is consensus here that NCES or an official state source is best, and that PSR should only be used in the absence of an official source? I would support that. Alansohn (talk) 20:53, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. Use the best source we can. Meters (talk) 21:07, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
I concur. Billhpike (talk) 21:23, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Ditto, with the caveat that the ONLY time PSR is a reliable source is for the limited use discussed here. John from Idegon (talk) 23:01, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Please come and help...

Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Community Unit School District 200#Requested move 5 January 2018, regarding a page related to this WikiProject. Your opinion and rationale are needed so a decision can be made. Thank you and Happy New Year to All!  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  11:38, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Franklin Road Academy

A COI editor had made some COI edit requests at the talk page for Franklin Road Academy. The editor is a novice, but his feedback has generally been constructive.

Since I made significant contributions to the article, I would prefer not to be the only editor replying to his comments. I would appreciate if some experienced contributors could also participate in the discussion. Billhpike (talk) 01:33, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Coordinators

We welcome ClemRutter who joins us as a coordinator of WkiProject Schools. Clem first edited Wikipedia way back in November 2003, and among all his other specialisations has been gnoming away improving many school articles. A computer science teacher by profession, in his retirement he is also an avid photographer with vast experience on Commons. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:49, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2018_January_9#Template:Infobox_UK_school

You are invited to join the discussion. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:59, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Editors should be aware that in addition to Template:Infobox_UK_school there is a development version of this template at Template:Infobox_UK_school/sandbox- indeed Template:Infobox_UK_school/doc documents the development version. The issue I discovered concerns pushpin_maps. On The Fallibroome Academy I have used it so I can display a map, as the anme doesn't help to locate the school --ClemRutter (talk) 15:14, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox UK school‎

Attention is drawn again to the discussion at Template talk:Infobox UK school‎. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

When is it appropriate for material about a teacher sexually assaulting a pupil to be in the school's article

See this edit at Mater Dei High School (New Jersey). A teacher (28, teacher Dean and coach) admitted to sexually assaulting a student and was given 4 years. There's no suggestion that the school was at fault, and I have thought that generally this material doesn't belong in a school's article. Doug Weller talk 15:37, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

responded on Talk:Mater Dei High School (New Jersey)--ClemRutter (talk) 16:40, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
responded on Talk:Mater Dei High School (New Jersey). See also WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:56, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

RfC about including a map of the school's attendance boundary

Should the article High Point High School include a map of the school's attendance boundary (meaning the area which the school draws its students)? This RFC is applicable to most US and Canadian public schools, which draw students from particular catchment areas.

See the thread: Talk:High_Point_High_School#RfC_about_including_a_map_of_the_school's_attendance_boundary WhisperToMe (talk) 04:58, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

School Zoning Map RFC

There is an RFC about the inclusion of school zoning maps at Talk:High Point High School#Map RFC BillHPike (talk, contribs) 05:06, 30 January 2018 (UTC)duplicate notice BillHPike (talk, contribs) 06:01, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorting Notable Alumni?

From what I saw, there isn't any preset rules for sorting the "Notable Alumni" list, should it go by year graduated? Nevermind, all lists are by alphabetical order. TomasTomasTomas (talk) 15:23, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Proposed update for two existing parameters in Infobox school

I have proposed for the two existing parameters in {{Infobox school}}; other_name and former_name to be updated. At present, these display as Other name and Former name but to cater for schools that have more than one other name and/or former name, I proposed other_names and former_names to also be added which would display as Other names and Former names. This is already present in {{Infobox university}}. Steven (Editor) (talk) 18:38, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Well spotted. Can't see any problem in adding them. You can test the idea at {{Infobox school/sandbox}}; I know of three ways of handling this sort of labelling problem. That is the simplest. The altenatives involve an second field- |other_name_use_plural and the second involves parsing the input for a arbitary break character such as #. This is done in some of the geotagging code but would be overkill here. This change also will need to be applied to {{tl|Infobox UK school}.}The school renaming policy and practice as a whole needs to be examined. Kidbrooke School was recently renamed, and will be renamed again in March, when it is rebranded. This has reached epidemic proportions, as multi-academy trusts fail or hand back the keys. As you can see the link we use for the old_urn has been broken at the government end, and their website is inconsistent in how it names the dfeno- sometimes using that, and sometimes laestab . See Template talk:Infobox UK school for where the discussion is takng place.ClemRutter (talk) 21:27, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Common sense in applying featured school criteria

This is going nowhere. Discussions about individual schools belong on the article talk pages

I suggest that it be stated that one should use common sense in applying featured school criteria, for the following reasons.

The goal of cleaning up all school articles on the basis of featured article criteria may give way to selective application of unrealistic standards. Most schools under this project do not have the prominence or reader interest (perhaps even literacy) in their area that featured schools enjoy. In most cases, retreat and service programs, along with other extracurriculars, get little or no media coverage, but they may be credibly claimed as characteristics of the school, listed only on the school's website. Please note the special characteristics of the five schools that have reached featured status (followed by the number of footnotes on their website). Also note, added later in this section, a review of the nature of the citations in Wikipedia articles for these schools.

  • Amador Valley High School – its size (2500) enables it to excel in extracurriculars; it is in the third wealthiest city in the country with a large pool of interested newspapers readers. (122)
  • The Avery Coonley School – an experimental school serving gifted children (123)
  • Baltimore City College – a magnate school for the whole area of Baltimore, the third oldest active public high school in the country (143)
  • School for Creative and Performing Arts – an extremely selective school, the first school in the country to combine a full range of arts studies  (151)
  • Stuyvesant High School – a very selective, large school with 3387 students, that has produced 4 nobel laureates (145)
  • The Judd School (First UK school FA!) – an historic, high-performing specialist school, among the best in England (111) Jzsj (talk) 07:01, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Jzsj. Wikipedia articles can only be created based on material that is available about them and can be verified in reliable sources; it's not a question of giving way to selective application of unrealistic standards. or only choosing to bring prominent schools up to FA standards. WP:FA is a measure of article quality, not of the standing of its subject. Articles are reviewed as featured article candidates for accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style according to our featured article criteria. The specific features of a school or college, its notability, or the actual number of footnotes are not especially taken into consideration. By virtue of their completeness and scope however, Featured Articles are often somewhat longer than most other articles about schools.
If you have a particular school article in mind that you would like to see promoted to FA, please feel free to work on it and let us know - we can probably help. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:39, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
I see little chance of the schools like Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School in the Cristo Rey Network having enough media coverage to be good or featured schools. I am suggesting that they not be held to the featured school criteria that have been made more rigorous by the Schools Project. The statement (on the Talk:Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School page) that I question is from an administrator who says: "I find your notion that it is OK for articles that are not yet Good or Featured articles to deviate from our established standards to be just plain wrong". Here the "our established standards" are the non-official, more rigorous standards proposed by the Schools Project. If you read the give and take I've had, mainly with two members of the Schools Project, at Talk:Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School, then you may understand the cause of my concern. I would like to know that school websites are acceptable for ordinary citations, like the retreat program and service program which they removed. Also that I needn't include a complete demographics table in a school article, when it grosses out the rest in the article, and all that's relevant is that over half of the school is of Hispanic origin. Also, common sense inclusion of the category "poverty-related organizations" seems helpful, since the subcategory "Cristo Rey Network" says nothing in itself about the clientele of the school. I see now that this discussion might have better been opened on the "Article guidelines" page of the Schools project, but I would like to restore some of the removed material (with clear reference to the school's website); I see such material (mentioned above) as factual, not promotional. @Kudpung: Jzsj (talk) 17:26, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Examples from featured schools

Wikipedia is less restrictive in its policies and less narrow in its interpretations than are those who propose to hold all schools to supposed criteria for featured schools. Their more restrictive policies and narrower interpretations are found at Talk:Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School. You will find evidence in the citations below of the more "common sense" understanding of Wikipedia policy even toward these very specially endowed, featured article schools.
Citations for the featured Amador Valley High School. (Footnote numbers are given in parenthesis.)

  • The school district's own announcement of its new principle is cited from the local weekly. (1)
  • Student statistics are briefly summarized rather than a demographics list being given. (2)
  • Its own school district report is referenced for the statement: “Performance results for 2008 show Amador Valley with an Academic Performance Index (API) of 10 on a 10-point scale.” (3)
  • Thirty four of the citations in the article are to the Pleasanton Weekly, which hardly has a neutral point of view as it writes to appeal to its small town readership, and is not a “mainstream newspaper” as mentioned in Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Its editor/correspondent Jeb Bing, who covers the school for the weekly, would not likely pass a very critical NPOV check. But please note the tolerance of Wikipedia for other reliable sources, as distinguished from what the verifiability policy calls Sources that are usually not reliable.
  • What I consider a minor point, but likely not admissable for the Schools Project: The statement “Amador Valley and the school district won national recognition” is sourced only to the school's report on its plan and to the local newspaper which doesn't explicitly mention Amador High as recipient of the recognition. (30,14)
  • Check these citations, including the school's own website, to see what verification you find of Teacher of the Year. (41-45)
  • What sports we're to look under for these championships are not mentioned and the references lead to the school's website. (54) Jzsj (talk) 19:37, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Citations for the featured Avery Coonley School.

  • If the criteria applied to Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School were applied to Coonley, the whole section on Extracurricular activities would be removed as referenced to the school website and going well beyond what is contained on that website. Also, the statement that the Chess Club “won the first-place trophy in the Naperville Chess Tournament in 2009” might more precisely mention that this was in “the kindergarten – grade one flight”. (85,98) Jzsj (talk) 20:52, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Citations for the featured Baltimore City College.

  • The statement that it finished eighth in the nation in football is referenced only to the school's yearbook. (84)
  • This section from a featured school might dictate more tolerance on the referencing of school activities. The only citation given is the school's yearbook, which I suggest is only marginally different from contemporary accounts from the school's website or newspaper: Baltimore City College offers more than 20 student clubs and organizations. These include chapters of national organizations such as the National Honor Society (established at the school in 1927) and Quill and Scroll. Service clubs include the Red Cross Club and Campus Improvement Association.[87] Other activities include the Drama Club, which produces an annual play, the Art Club, Model UN, Band, Dance, and One City One Book, an organization that invites the entire school community to read one book selected by faculty and invites the author of the book for a reading, discussion, and question and answer period.[87] In 2007, Pulitzer Prize winner, MacArthur Fellow, and novelist Edward P. Jones discussed his book Lost in the City. The school store is operated by students and managed by the Student Government Association. One of City College's most notable academic teams is the It's Academic team which participates on It's Academic, a local television show.[87]
  • No citation is given for the following statements: In recent years, the team has advanced to final rounds at the Harvard Invitational Tournament and the National Forensic League National Tournament. Baltimore City College debate has sent multiple policy debate teams to the Tournament of Champions, the most elite high school debate competition in the United States. Jzsj (talk) 22:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
If you think that Amador Valley High School, Avery Coonley School, and Baltimore City College no longer meet featured article criteria, you can request a review at Wikipedia:Featured article review. If you think that some statements in those articles require reliable sources, you can request them. If you think that the Pleasanton Weekly is not a reliable source, then you can open a discussion about it at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. The same is true for any other source you have questions about. 32.218.38.11 (talk) 23:05, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
Please take the time to read what I am saying, which goes directly contrary to your suggestion. I say above that special Schools Project criteria are too restrictive and should not be enforced as they have been on Talk:Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School, as evidenced in many of your 15 comments there. My point is that you should pay attention to what Wikipedia says: "Featured articles are considered to be the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, as determined by Wikipedia's editors. They are used by editors as examples for writing other articles."Jzsj (talk) 07:04, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
I've read every word you've written, and all you've said (over and over and over and over again) is that because some featured school articles don't seem to follow Wikipedia guidelines (in your estimation), then the Cristo Rey schools shouldn't have to follow them either. In other words, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. 32.218.152.188 (talk) 20:08, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
In response to the insistence that all articles must comply with the criteria for featured schools, I went on to exemplify those criteria from the articles on these schools. The point is that these featured school articles do not follow the interpretation of Wikipedia policy applied by the chief collaborators in the Schools Project. And Wikipedia itself describes featured school articles as guides to its policy. I never said that featured schools are acting contrary to that policy. Jzsj (talk) 10:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Citations for the featured The Judd School.

  • There are dozens of references to the school's website, but most to our purpose might be these statements: In recent years crowd numbers have swelled to 1,000 supporters on occasions. The fixture is notorious for generating noisy, passionate, support with fans from both sides interacting in a humorous and banterous manner. (92)
  • The fact that a notable person attended the school is referenced only to the school website. (107)
  • The three paragraphs on the current curriculum are quite detailed and sourced only to the school. Depending on your perspective, some of what's presented about the curriculum may be considered promotional: it serves to generate interest in prospective students. But I suggest that we use these featured articles as criteria of what “common sense” application of Wikipedia policies means. Use of school websites as references in Wikipedia is extremely widespread and I suggest one reason for this is that these websites are just as accountable for telling the truth about a school as are many of the books that are accepted as references but are clearly written to promote the school. One must judge by the credibility of the information, and I suggest that in the case of Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School what it says about itself is made credible by the abundant references we have on the Cristo Rey Network of which they are a part. (65,73,77,78) Jzsj (talk) 14:24, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Jzsj, I don't think this discussion is going anywhere. Here at WPWPSCH we mainly discuss the more general aspects of school articles, their content, and notability. If you wish to bring up issues concerning individual featured school articles, I suggest you start a discussions on their talk pages and invite their FA reviewers and their other contributors to comment there. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
I see that at "Revision as of 23:40, 28 January 2018" you eliminated some of the key words in my proposal above, making it unintelligible. I have placed these words (second paragraph, first sentence) in bold because they are critical to what follows, that the Schools Project can easily "give way to selective application of unrealistic standards" (even beyond the featured school criteria), perhaps due to the personal preferences of those spending much time with the project. As is evident from the discussion at Talk:Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School, the few independent editors, who have somehow found this talk page, reflect what may be a dominant perspective, that Wikipedia policy should not be made more demanding to accommodate those who will (perhaps selectively and not without prejudice) savage school articles to impose some unrealistic ideals of their own construction. (If the reversions of my work had been well-sourced, much of the talk on the Notre Dame page would have been avoided.) I agree with your guideline that "lists should be kept to a minimum" which is in line with general Wikipedia policy, but then why do you not come to our defense when the chief collaborator in the Schools Project insists that a separate section and complete list be included? Also, does he still have your support when he excludes simple mention of the school's retreat and service program? How about his confusing pre-nominals (like Fr.) with the honorifics mentioned in Wiki policy? And why exclude the category "Poverty-related organization" when it gives a succinct description of the school that is not clear from the subcategory Cristo Rey Network? I would hope that you, as an administrator and chief patron of the School's Project, will indicate when anyone exaggerates the demands this project makes for articles on schools. As to moving this discussion to some school's talk page, what is at issue here is the policy being imposed by the Schools Project, as exemplified by its chief collaborator and one or other who unwaveringly follow his lead. And someone, likely from the schools project, goes anonymous (32.218) when making more careless statements. This seems to me the proper place to raise the issue.Jzsj (talk) 09:42, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Jzsj, the deletion of a snippet of your text was unintentional - that ought to be fairly obvious. It came about while adding links you were too lazy to add for the pages you were discussing. Now please take your discussion to the individual article talk pages as requested, and if you wish to make suggestions there, please first familiarise yourself with the difference between guidelines and policy. There is no such person or thing as chief collaborator in the Schools Project. Nobody from our schools project is following this thread here except its coordinators whose job it indeed is to direct discussions and/or comments to the appropriate venues . Please be very careful with your mischaracterisations of the editors and discussions to the appropriate venues work on this project. Thank you. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:46, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
As I review all the material in the Schools Project websites, it is the application to Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School of the principles by members of the School Project that gives me serious reason for concern. The issue is much larger than what happens to that one school article. I opened the question here in the hopes that it would guide the actions of those dedicated to the project. I have never attacked them personally but only identified them to bring attention to their edits. I hope this will do some good! I suspect that the discussion will end up in dispute resolution. Thanks for your help. Jzsj (talk) 10:09, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

How

How can join a member of WikiProject Schools?Kau thænt (talk) 10:54, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

How

How can join a member of WikiProject Schools?Kau thænt (talk) 10:54, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Just add you name to this page Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Participants and we will find you. ClemRutter (talk) 13:26, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Urgent request: Eyes needed.

Unfortunate events in Florida today are beginning to unfold as the highest casualty high school shooting in the United States. As usual, experienced editor's are encouraged to watch list both Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 23:44, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Redirect vs Deletion

- is a policy, not some interpretation of a recent RfC which some think it gives them licence to send masses of harmless old school articles to AfD in the hope they will be deleted. Perhaps they could better spend their time helping to combat spam. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:00, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Please watch Cape Fear Academy

It appears that the administrators of Cape Fear Academy are unhappy that the Wikipedia page mentions the school’s reported association with the Ku Klux Klan. There have been several attempts at removing the content ([3], [4], [5]). Please consider adding this page to your watch list. BillHPike (talk, contribs) 05:28, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Greenbrier High School (Arkansas)

A discussion that may be of interest to members of this project is taking place at the above talk page. Please lend your views if you are so inclined. Thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 01:15, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

St Mary's Hall, Brighton- needs an article

Girls' school in England, founded 1836, closed 2009. Gets a brief mention at Roedean_School#Absorption_of_St_Mary's_Hall, to which I've redirected it for now, but I'm sure it needs an article and have found several sources which are on the talk page of the redirect. I've got no time to create an article right now but someone here might like to have a go. I'll also suggest it to the Sussex wikiproject.(How did I find it? Anna Campbell is at AfD, I saw it on an alert listing, and I wondered why her school wasn't linked!) PamD 08:51, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

@PamD: I started a draft here. Others are welcome to contribute to the draft! Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 16:52, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Draft:St Mary's Hall, Brighton is ready to be moved to article space-- since there is a redirect by that name, now, it apparently needs to be moved by someone with more privileges than I have. Any interested administrator? Cheers! Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 18:27, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I can't move it straightaway, but I nominated the redirect for G6 CSD. After it's deleted, you or Pam can move it yourself. Not familiar with the naming convention on British places, but that would not be the proper title for a US school. John from Idegon (talk) 23:03, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, John from Idegon, I'll watch the redirect and move the draft. The naming convention for British schools usually eliminates the period in the abbreviation "St Mary's", and the U.S. uses the period. (See St. Mary's Hall for disambiguation.) Cheers!Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 23:26, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

East Liverpool Junior/Senior High School

Any assistance would be appreciated at East Liverpool Junior/Senior High School. Apparently, the school's athletic director wants a certain alumnus listed. I have moved the conversation from my talk page to Talk:East Liverpool Junior/Senior High School#Notable alumni. --JonRidinger (talk) 15:05, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

JonRidinger, I've dealt with this for now. Keep the article and the user's tp on your watchlist. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:40, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Phillips Exeter Academy

I'm currently conducting a GAR of Phillips Exeter Academy. In several places the article refers to itself as the Academy. Would love opinions about whether that's the right short-hand for that particular institution. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:23, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Barkeep49, at first blush it looks a bit promotional to me. If I were doing the GAR I would have a serious copy edit of it, or even fail it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:45, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
I think the article has the bones of a GA but is a ways off, the self-promotion being one aspect. As long as an editor is willing to work with me to improve it since it's in an area of general interest for me I'm all for working with them. The use of the Academy felt like Wp:Puffery to me but I wanted other thoughts before raising that concern. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:03, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

If a school's name is changed by the school board (with no new name selected yet, nor with a date of name change determined yet), should that be mentioned in the article?

Please see Talk:Robert E. Lee High School (San Antonio) and the talk page history for a debate over whether including the fact the school's name will change as per school board order (even though the new name and the date on when the name will change are not yet determined) should be included in the article at this time (currently).

It is important because inexperienced Wikipedia editors attempting to update the article may possibly have their edits reverted, and we need to determine whether this should be done.

Please discuss the matter here: Talk:Robert E. Lee High School (San Antonio)

@John from Idegon: — Preceding unsigned comment added by WhisperToMe (talk • contribs) 03:01, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

St Joseph's College (Hong Kong)

I gave this article a good clean up several years ago but it's crept back to being overtly promotional and including a lot of totally superfluous detail. If anyone has time could they give it a thorough pruning. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:28, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Animator in religious school

One of the recent religious private school articles I was trying to clean up had a position called an "animator" [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] and it has nothing to do with multimedia. I wanted to add it to the Animator (disambiguation) page but there doesn't seem to be a glossary of religious school positions. Any ideas where I can direct this term? AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 16:01, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I admit that this falls outside my expertise but the best I can come up with is to the education section of chaplainBest, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:01, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, I've added a sentence about animators in the chaplain education section with references. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 18:37, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, and both parts of Punjab: Government High Schools

I stumbled on Government High School for Boys, which at the time was about a school in Salarwala, Pakistan Punjab, and moved it to Government High School for Boys, Salarwala. I considered speedying the resulting redirect, and decided that was neither feasible nor desirable, so instead I spent a considerable amount of time and effort searching in order to assemble a DAB page. I discovered some very bad articles, some of which I fixed up a bit. I was not able to determine whether some of the schools whose titles begin or include "Government High School" were boys-only or coeducational; in many cases where it was not stated in the article, there was no web page I could check, or the school's website is only in Bengali, and the Indian Punjab schools directory linked as a school website in some cases requires hoop-jumping including a captcha and then launches a pop-up that Firefox prevents me from seeing. I left these schools out rather than guess. Next day, I was going to look at schools we have under an abbreviation, "Govt" with or without punctuation rather than "Government", and probably move them in addition to listing the boys' schools on the DAB page. But I discovered first that Govt Higher secondary school is another hopelessly general title redirecting to a specific school after a move—Government Higher Secondary School, Peruvilai, speedy declined in 2011 when requested after the move (while Govt Higher Secondary School was deleted A7?! in 2014), and then secondly that Govt. High School, Wadala Sandhuan (for boys) does not appear to be about a verifiably existing institution. Both references go to the same directory, and name a girls' school. I cannot find evidence of a similarly named boys' school at the location; all I can find is a Facebook page that quotes from the Wikipedia page and appears to be used as a photo album, although I don't have a Facebook account and there may be posts there that I am not seeing that would help verify its existence.

So at this point I'm submitting the situation to the members of this wikiproject. Should I speedy the Wadala Sandhaun school as a hoax, or can it be saved (and moved)? Shall I go ahead and redirect various capitalizations of Govt Higher Secondary School to my existing DAB page and fold in the boys' schools I find under such titles, while moving the lot to unabbreviated titles, as was my somewhat bumbling plan, or is that DAB page already too horrible to be useful and you folks would prefer to rejigger it somehow? Should any of these schools be AfDed (that would make me sad) or is there anyone who can read Bengali and/or Urdu and find more information about some of them, including which others are boys-only? Also, Kudpung or any other admin here, was Govt Higher Secondary School actually a school article, rather than a biography, and if so, is it on a school we don't have an article on? Yngvadottir (talk) 19:57, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Yngvadottir, Ive redirected Gov.t High School Wadala to its locality. It had no useful encyclopedic content. FWIW, this was the content of Govt Higher Secondary School:

from <redacted>, I have complete my Higher education from Govt Higher Secondary School Kadipora. Now coming to my family background, My family is a beautiful family of 8 members in my family including me, My hobbies I like to read, I like to write; I like to think, I like to dream; I like to talk, I like to listen. I like to see the sunrise in the morning, I like to see the moonlight at night; I like to feel the music flowing on my face, I like to smell the wind coming from the ocean. I like to look at the clouds in the sky with a blank mind, I like to do thought experiment when I cannot sleep in the middle of the night. I like flowers in spring, rain in summer, leaves in autumn, and snow in winter. I like to sleep early, I like to get up late; I like to be alone, I like to be surrounded by people. I like country’s peace, I like metropolis’ noise; I like the beautiful lake in Anzwalla, I like the flat cornfield in Champaign. I like delicious food and comfortable shoes; I like good books and romantic movies. I like the land and the nature, are My short time goal is to get a good job and settle in my life, My long time goal is to become a good citizen of india, My Contact Detail :- +<redacxted> Mail Address :- <redacted> Designed & Developed by <redacted>

There are so many sources for that text on Google, unless someone knows about poetry it's impossible to know what it is. Thank goodness we now have ACPERM. Any other schools that obviously serve no purpose in Wikipedia, PROD (most are SPA so they'll get deleted) or redirect to locality with {{R from school}}. Take your pick. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:59, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
I see, yes. I really hate to PROD secondary schools, but I have just found two more at "Govt" that would require real effort for me to determine even whether they are coed or single-sex (e.g.: Govt Higher Secondary School, Tezu). Meanwhile, thinking more about it I don't think I can in good conscience redirect Govt Higher secondary school to Government High School for Boys; they aren't all boys' schools. Considering deletion review as specified by the no longer active Blanchardb when declining in 2011. I doubt a useful article pn the class of school can be written to which it can be redirected. Anyone willing to IAR delete it? Yngvadottir (talk) 16:02, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

New good-faith editor creating non-notable articles

An inexperienced but good-faith editor, PercussionistUnited (that's not a ping), has created a couple of school articles which I do not think achieve notability: Newton-Conover City Schools, Discovery High School of Newton-Conover. Since I'm not familiar with the notability guidelines for schools, could you guys take a look at them, and if they are problematical, gently let the editor know and let them know how to proceed henceforth? I encourage avoiding scaring him away, as he seems a valuable asset to the project. Thanks. Softlavender (talk) 05:16, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

PS: There's a small chance that the editor is a sock (forgotten password, etc.) of one of the redlinks, all SPAs, who worked on this article: [11], and that article itself (Newton-Conover High School) needs to be reviewed for notability. Softlavender (talk) 05:25, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

 Done. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:37, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Naming conventions for U.S. schools with the same name but in different states

Hi! My understanding is that naming conventions for U.S. schools with the same name but in different states is to disambiguate with only the name (for example ABC High School (Colorado)) unless there are multiple schools of the same name in the same state or if the school is in a major city (say New York City or Los Angeles). However I'm having trouble finding a discussion of the naming convention or of the applicable RFC.

This is important because some schools are National Register of Historic Places and it seems like the NRHP is different (to always include the city name in the disambiguation). I'm trying to find out if there are conflicting guidelines.

@Doncram: WhisperToMe (talk) 19:59, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Let's not manufacture an issue. There are a bunch of old closed school buildings that are listed on the National Register, and which routinely would get (City, State) disambiguation if I created the article, consistent with wp:USPLACE and how most other types of buildings and historic sites and other places get named in the U.S. Those are for the most part different than articles on current high schools. The article namings have been very stable, there is no big current issue AFAIK. --Doncram (talk) 20:04, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost

The latest issue of The Signpost, Wikipedia's monthly newspaper, was issued to subcsribers today. I am hoping feature an article on WP:WPSCH in the 'projet's report' column in next month's (May) issue. I am writing it as an editorial and would like to include some interviews with regular members of the Schools Project.

If you are interested in being interviewed, please let me know, and we'll set up a dedicated page for it. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:18, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Billhpike, Meters? John from Idegon (talk) 02:24, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Sure, I can comment on it. Meters (talk) 05:35, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
I'll comment. BillHPike (talk, contribs) 18:11, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Billhpike, Meters, Thanks. This has been postponed because there is already a Projects Report for this month. We'll get back to you. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:25, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Any time. Meters (talk) 17:58, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Suggest that you schedule it for the issue closest to 1 September, as that is back to school time in the US and Canada (and possibly other places too). John from Idegon (talk) 19:34, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Recent school district boundary changes

Found a document from the U.S. Department of Education which detailed school district boundary changes, including simple merges, simple splits, complex changes, grade span changes, etc. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/data/EDGE_SchoolDistrict_BoundaryChanges_2017.xlsx WhisperToMe (talk) 02:37, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   07:54, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Glossopdale Community College problem

Wikipedia policy is to name schools articles by the current name of the school. This is hardly stable. In the UK schools are changing their names at an alarming rate. For instance I detected an edit on Glossopdale Community College where a new head was appointed and the school renamed to Glossopdale School. A new editor picked this up, and went to the article and changed the school name in the infobox and the lede. We have the famous school Kidbrooke School, which became Correlli Academy and now is officially Halley Academy.

So quo vadis? Do we leave the article in situ- provide redirects, and modify the lede and the infobox away from the article title. WP:MOVE the article to the new location, which provide a redirect from the last previous name and will often generate double redirects. (This is only open to autoconfirmed users) Them manually go through the article changing some of the old school name entries- to the new article title

Whatever we do, advice needs to be in Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article guidelines. and possible as a head box {{notice}} on the project page. Any thoughts? --ClemRutter (talk) 08:55, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that keeping up with name changes can be daunting. However, failing to keep article titles current can lead to other problems-- recently, a stub article deleted for lack of verifiable secondary sources turned out to have plenty of sources, but the article title was not current. The organization had a long, documented history but had changed titles five times since 1934; the edit summaries reflected some of the changes, not all. It's now restored here. I think the Wikipedia policy to use the current title is appropriate, but perhaps we need a clear statement about resolving double redirects (updating the target of the redirect to the current article title). Cheers! Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 23:11, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Foundation Public School

This article has a mess and a troubled history. It's impossible to isolate any one editor to appeal to because it's ten years ago and many have contributed. After various spam and copyvio were removed, it now completely lacks a lead. What should we do with it? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:55, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Starting a Task Force?

Hi! I'm not sure if this is the right place but I would like to start a "task force" for schools in either South Carolina, USA or both North and South Carolina. Any Thoughts? Nolan Perry Yell at me! 21:29, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

@Nolan Perry: I'm interested in helping with this topic. Don't know if that helps. PseudoSkull (talk) 23:11, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
Nolan Perry, we do not have any state level task forces at this time. That certainly is not to say we can't, but before one starts a task force, there needs to be a list of tasks that need addressing. I'm asking here, because I really don't know:
  1. Are schools in the Carolinas under-covered in comparison to the rest of the country?
  2. Is the educational environment in the Carolinas substantially different than the rest of the country as so to require a different editing approach?
  3. How does Wikipedia benefit from a task force focusing on one or two states?
  4. Why can't any state-specific issues be addressed within our current framework?
Just my thoughts on the subject. There is nothing stopping you, or any individual editor, from focusing their efforts on particular geographic areas. I'm one of the coordinators of this project, and I basically self assigned myself to coordinate the projects efforts in North America. Kudpung and Tedder pretty much look after the rest of the world. But even then, I specialize in schools in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, because those are the areas I know the availability of resources the best. Like any editor here, just do what gives you Joy! John from Idegon (talk) 02:26, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
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