Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools
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Some Wikipedians have gotten together to improve and standardize the quality and consistency of school-related articles. Ultimately, our goal here is to bring notable articles up to feature article standards. Project members also make some suggestions about how to organize school articles (excluding colleges and universities). Note that these are only recommendations, and editors are not obliged to follow them.
Contents
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[edit] Project goals
This project aims to improve the quality of school-related articles, and to provide a recommended article structure for all such articles. Articles affiliated with this project should become far more substantial than stubs, and should progress to the point of matching the quality of feature articles.
[edit] General tips
- Write a strong lead. Be sure to write a lead that concisely summarizes the school into one or two paragraphs which make sense to someone who may know nothing about the school in question.
- Support your contributions. Before you start an article on a school, or make additions, it is strongly suggested you first have an adequate amount of verifiable information about the school readily available, written in reliable published sources, independent of the school. This will make meeting the recommended content requirements far easier than trying to find all the information after you have already started the article (or hoping others will).
- Use images if possible. Images can greatly enhance articles, but only use them when they help illustrate the topic (e.g. are relevant), and ensure that they are freely licensed or public domain (See Wikipedia:Image use policy). In most cases, the only way to accomplish this, is for a Wikipedian (such as yourself) to personally take the photo themselves and then donate the picture to the public domain or license it freely.
- Use an Infobox. Infoboxes provide quick access to vital information on a school, and are convenient for readers to find very common information (see talk for more info and sample infoboxes).
- Avoid bulk additions. The bulk automated entry of schools is strongly discouraged, as is the bulk adding of schools to the Articles for deletion page. As a general rule of thumb, only add schools that you are willing to do significant research on.
- Be bold! You very likely know what perfect articles look like. They cover everything they should without going on forever. Common sense could have told you almost all of the items mentioned above. Ultimately, assume good faith and go out there and write some good articles.
[edit] Structure
The key to writing a good school article is to explain why the school is unique. What makes it different from every other school? Does it have special programs? A history of championship sports teams? Famous alumni? Has there been a noteworthy event there?
The article should start with a good introduction/lead, giving the full complete official name of the School, detail about location (in suburb, downtown, where?), founder and founding name, and affiliation with any larger school system, if applicable. Also, add a few facts about the school that make it unique. Ideally a picture of the school should be included (if a free image is available).
The following section names are generally for US schools, and may be adjusted to suit local spelling, custom, and organization.
Sections of the article:
- History — Describe the history of the school, including noteworthy milestones in its development.
- Campus — Describe the overall shape and size of the campus. Mention any famous buildings or stadia and their architects.
- Students — Statistics on students, size of student body (always state the date when the information is current and be cautious about having too many statistics that will need to be updated frequently). Mention of individual current students or individual student's achievement while at the high school is not suggested, unless they are well recognized (noted) outside of the school.
- Faculty — State the number of faculty members, statistics on faculty, student-to-teacher ratio, etc. Distinguish between tenure/nontenured, full- and part-time (if possible). Names of noteworthy (e.g. award-winning, published) faculty of the past can be mentioned. Generally timeless information (such as published teachers) is preferred over transitory information (like the exact number of math teachers at a point in time).
- Extracurricular activities — Mention the sports team(s) of the school and what is notable about them. Here is also a good place to mention specific traditions of school, like students' union/student council activities, a student newspaper, clubs, regular activities, etc. The heading may be changed accordingly in regard to the importance of sports, clubs, traditions, students' unions etc. For example, alternative headings could be Students' Union, Sports and Traditions or Students' Union Activities. Mention significant championships for the sports teams.
- Curriculum — If the curriculum of the school is especially unique or notable, mention why here. For instance, if the high school is called a culinary academy, elaborate on this here.
- Notable alumni — Bulleted list of alumni that are notable (outside the school). Mention the graduation year and give a short description why they are famous. Also, include an annotation to show that they did indeed attend the school.
- References — Provide verifiable reliable sources of information about the school, that are independent of the school itself. This may include newspaper and magazine articles on the school. For private schools, an accreditation body or government source should be provided to show the organization is a legitimate school. An article should not rely solely on what its subject has to say about itself (as with any article in Wikipedia). If a resource is online (which is ideal) consider that potential it will go offline (newspaper's often allow free reading only for recent stories) and provide sufficient information that the story could still be found (author, publication, full article title, date, etc). See Wikipedia:Footnotes the technical details of how to do this in a standard format.
- External links — Give a link to the website of the school, preferably one in the English language. You may also include other informational links that may interest readers, but whose contents might be beyond the scope of inclusion in the article.
[edit] Applicable categories
Generally all of Category:Education, but especially articles in the subcategories of
- Category:Secondary schools by country for secondary schools, divided by country and then subdivided by state, county or region
- Category:High schools for high schools, divided by country and then subdivided by state or region
- Category:Middle schools for middle schools, divided by country and then subdivided by state or region
- Category:Elementary and primary schools for elementary or primary schools, divided by country and then subdivided by state, county or region
- Category:Private schools for private (non-government-run) schools
- Category:Educational institutions by year of establishment categorized by year the school was founded, divided by century, decade, and then year.
- Category:School districts (for schools in Australia, Canada and the USA)
See also
- List of schools by country
- Category:Education by country
- Category:Public education in the United States for American public school (government-run) systems and broader public education topics, divided by state.
[edit] Sources for school articles
[edit] History
Some schools have published histories. Check the online catalogue at Worldcat. For UK schools the best reference is COPAC. Smaller schools might not have deposited a school history with one of the major deposit libraries so check the catalogue of the relevant local library (most are now online). Even if you do not live in the locality it is possible to borrow any book for a modest fee via the inter-library loan system
Many schools have buildings which are of architectural importance. Some English schools have been classified by English Heritage as listed buildings and are included on the Images of England website, while some American schools are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
[edit] Statistics
[edit] United Kingdom
- Schoolsfinder has detailed statistics for English schools including the size of the school, the school profile if available, and a link to the school’s OFSTED report.
- Most English Local Education Authorities have comprehensive websites which provide details of school admissions policies and other useful information. The Department for Education and Skills has a Local Authorities address finder.
- The Department for Education and Skills' website has comprehensive statistics including school performance tables and local statistics about education.
- The Independent Schools Inspectorate has online inspection reports for private/independent schools.
- The Standards Site has comprehensive lists of Beacon Schools, Academies and Specialist Schools (follow the links at the bottom of their home page).
[edit] Awards
[edit] United Kingdom
[edit] Notable alumni sources
The following is a list of external sources which contain notable alumni from various schools, which don't (all) yet have articles. Ideally this should be used for sources that are selective (separating the most notable from the rest of the alumni). Also, please try to list large sources at the top, and sources for individual schools lower down. This can be used as a future reference if/when a school article is made in the future, or if you find a source that has more useful information than you can take advantage of right away. When using information from one of these sources, always try to confirm it with another source (such as a newspaper article specifically about the person) and don't automatically assume any source is comprehensive, even in its field of expertise. Ideally you can confirm something from both sides (e.g. the school acknowledges the individual, and the individual acknowledges the school).
[edit] International sources
- nndb - Shows what notable people attended a specific educational institution. For instance there are a large number of alums listed for DeWitt Clinton High School, Bronx, NY. One means (not the only one) of searching for a specific school here is using a Google site search, such as this search for "Woodrow Wilson High School" in Dallas.
[edit] United States
Athletes:
- The Baseball Cube has a very extensive database of baseball players, with the data searchable by city, high school, college, team, etc. Here is the search for Long Beach, California. Although I am always leary about secondary sources, they seem to have gotten the facts correct for every person that I knew details on, and people who collect baseball statistics seem pretty fanatical about accuracy. They do admit that it is not a complete list.
- Women's United Soccer Association - Each player bio seems to have the high school the player attended.
Local sources:
- Boston Public Schools - Includes various notable people like Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Lists about a dozen schools.
- Baltimore County Public Schools - Already partly used for Dulaney High School, but not all names could be used yet, either because their notability isn't confirmed, or a particular school doesn't have an article.
Other less reliable sources: The following probably shouldn't be relied on as a proper source (at least not alone), but will inform you of an association that you can research for a proper source:
- Celebrity Prep Schools - This appears to rely heavily on tips. So you probably shouldn't use it as a single source, but once you get two names (famous person and school) it might be easier to find a better more reliable source.
[edit] Individual alumni information
Use this sub-page for recording school alumni who can't yet be placed in an article (e.g. the school article doesn't exist yet). When an article is made, the info can be moved there. By linking from this sub-page, somebody who creates the article would see this in the backlinks.
[edit] Templates
To further spread recognition of this project and create more consistent messages, use these templates.
[edit] Article talk pages
{{WPSchool}} is for all schools that are part of this WikiProject. This adds articles to the appropriate categories affiliated with this Project.
- For WikiProject Schools-related articles needing a photograph, use {{reqphotoin|Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools}} in the talk page, which adds the article to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools. You can help Wikipedia by uploading freely licensed photographs for these articles to Wikimedia Commons.
[edit] Article namespace
{{cleanup-school}} is for articles that need cleanup and/or considerable work.
{{subst:merge-school}} is for articles that need considerable expansion or merging to their subjects' respective locality or school district articles.
[edit] User namespace
{{User WikiProject Schools}} is for Wikipedians who want to place a userbox on their page.
[edit] Infobox templates
- See also Category:Education infobox templates
- {{Infobox Aust school}}
- {{Infobox Aust school private}}
- {{Infobox Education in Canada}}
- {{Infobox Education in UAE}}
- {{Infobox elementary school}}
- {{Infobox English Public School}}
- {{Infobox HighSchool}}
- {{Infobox high school}}
- {{Infobox Law School}}
- {{Infobox middle school}}
- {{Infobox NZ school}}
- {{Infobox Private School}}
- {{Infobox Public School}}
- {{Infobox School}}
- {{Infobox School2}} (deprecated)
- {{Infobox School3}}
- {{Infobox School4}} (deprecated)
- {{Infobox School Club}}
- {{Infobox School II}}
- {{Infobox School GB}}
- {{Infobox Secondary school}}
- {{Infobox UK schools}}
- {{Infobox UKschool}}
- {{Infobox US school}}
[edit] Articles
[edit] Article grading
School articles are graded for quality based on the Assessment scale and for importance using the Release Version Criteria scale. For further information, visit the Assessment department.
[edit] WikiProject Schools articles by quality
[edit] WikiProject Schools articles by importance
[edit] Featured articles
These are school articles currently holding the status of Featured articles. They have been identified as some of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community.
[edit] Featured article candidates
This section will highlight a school article that can be recommended as a feature article. That is an article that is particularly well-written and complete. Please list an article that is close to this criteria so that everyone can edit away to bring it up to featured article quality and submit it for consideration as a featured article.
- Charter School of Wilmington — perhaps a little further from featured article quality than TJ and Stuy.
- Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology — could use some more pictures in my opinion.
- Sacred Heart Convent School (Jamshedpur) — TOC seems unusually long.
- Aquinas College, Perth
[edit] Good article candidates
This section will highlight a school article that can be recommended as a good article. That is an article that is particularly well-written and complete but may lack the length or breath to be a featured article. Please list an article that is close to this criteria so that everyone can edit away to bring it up to good article quality and submit it for consideration as a good article.
- Cinco Ranch High School — Some stylistic things needs to be sorted out, but the main concern is that the article is poorly referenced.
[edit] School articles recommended for deletion
- See Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Schools for a current list of schools which have been nominated for deletion.
- See also Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch/Schools for deletion archive for a historic listing of school deletion debates.
[edit] Collaboration of the week
Each week one article in each country/region may receive shared attention. Please feel free to update this yourself if a name has been here for more than a week (and you wish to bump up another article). Also, please update Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/School Collaboration Week at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/School Collaboration of the Week to update the {{WPSchools}} project banner.
- Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse - reportedly the oldest wooden school structure in the United States. Sounds interesting. Silensor 07:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
- Westville Boys' High School -- A South African high school with lots of information. I think the article would benefit from some outside opinion. Also, it would make the school project a little more global! GetDownAdam 16:40, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
- Guildford Grammar School, Australia
- Greenwich High School needs more information.
See also Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch and School articles to be merged
Please update this regularly. This section was last updated on 12th March 2007.
[edit] Suggestions for next week
- McGill-Toolen Catholic High School Someone recently added a section on Computer and Hardware with a subsection on their domain name. I'm not sure if these are appropriate, but would appreciate some of you taking a look before I revert. Thanks, Rlm0710 20:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Newton North High School. Could be considered to have one of the best theatre programs in the US. NauticaShades(talk) 19:33, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
- St. Anne's-Belfield School. A promenent Virginia school in dire need of a better article. Pcbene 00:49, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
- Lowell Senior High School (Lowell, Indiana). These guys have very little content, and what they do have is not complete. Tvaughn05e (Talk)(Contribs) 19:55, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
- De La Salle High School (Concord, California) Considering their record for holding the longest winning streak in sports ever (besides the Harlem Globetrotters, but you get the picture), this school definitely deserves a better article. --Geopgeop 21:38, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
- The articles on secondary education and high school are both currently a complete mess. A global collaboration is needed to sort out the problems. The high school article has in appropriately expanded to include a discussion on secondary education worldwide when what is really needed are proper definitions of the word high school worldwide as the term has many different meanings and usages. I think these articles should be a high priority before focusing on individual school articles. Dahliarose 15:17, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
- Hargrave Military Academy --Bender235 20:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
- DeMatha Catholic High School --Bender235 20:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
- Kennet Comprehensive School one of very few state schools to have 3 specialisms and ranks the highest in the county. robertvan1 20:38, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
- Oak Hill Academy. Storied basketball program. Perennial top 3 team in the Nation. --Bender235 01:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
- Long Beach Polytechnic High School. Named "Best High School Athletic program" in the US by Sports Illustrated. --Bender235 01:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
- St. Paul Institution - the first English school in Negeri Sembilan. Izzudin 13:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
- English High School of Boston - oldest public school in the United States, yet the English/Latin rivalry has more text than the school itself. -- Jjjsixsix (Added 26 February 2006)
- Whitney High School The best high school in California based upon API score. Could definitely use some expanding and clean up. Jumping cheese Cont@ct 07:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
- Stirling High School - Scotland -- Pcfreakshow (Added 06/03/2007)
- Christian Brothers College, Perth - Small article, with alot of interesting information, good selection of references. SMBarnZy 16:00, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
- Melbourne High School (Victoria) - An academically selective school which has a disorganized article. Lots of info is out there. Could be FA. Sfdasfr 06:52, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
- Hampton School - An English Private school in the suburbs of London. It would benefit from some outside information and opinion J lawson06 on 18 March 2007
[edit] Articles in need of emergency, short term attention
- Merewether High School seems to have a lot of unneeded opinion and information, I think it would be handy for some people to run through the page, Talk:Merewether High School --bdude Talk 05:22, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
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- Some clean-up has been done to conform it to WP style, but the article is essentially a stub in need of more meaningful content. I'll revisit it soon to see what more can be done. Thanks for the alert — it definitely required help.
- — Jim Dunning talk : 22:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
- Kellenberg Memorial High School includes unverifiable claims about the school's reputation. I removed them, but they were put back; I don't want to get in an edit war, so I'm asking for help instead. If this problem can be taken care of, I would be interested in reorganizing the article in WikiProject Schools structure.
-Hickoryhillster 03:07, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
- Stowe middle school. I deemed this middle school article unsalvagable and nominated it for deletion. I don't see a "List of school-related articles for deletion" so I'll list it here in case anyone on this project wants to try and save it. - Aagtbdfoua 13:50, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
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- This article is probably salvageable, but combining the middle school material into a single article about the Stowe School District is probably a good idea. The middle school itself is too small to warrant its own article (it's even physically attached to the older high school and is listed in state education department records as "Stowe High/Middle School").
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- Some weasel/pr material (lifted directly from the school's website) has been removed or modified, a new infobox and a couple citations/sources have been added. More work needs to be done, though. It probably be removed from the AfD list — I'll be back to do some more work on it.
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- --— Jim Dunning talk : 06:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
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- Stowe middle school lost its Afd and has been deleted. Despite being a descent article, it didn't have enough to establish notability. If someone wishes to merge the article into Stowe School District, or expand it into Stowe combined high school/middle school, let me know as I have saved one of the last versions of the article in anticipation of this decision. --Jh12 12:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
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- I'll take a look at combining the contributions into one for Stowe School District. I agree there may not be much to go on that makes Stowe notable, but a couple things that come to mind are the area's affluence, the school's proximity to a notable ski resort and there are some celebrities that live there (and their children may attend the schools).
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- — Jim Dunning talk : 17:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Participants
To sign your name, simply click [edit] on the right, and add your name to the bottom of the list with a pound (hash) and four tildes (# ~~~~), with an optional comment.
- Arundhati_bakshi (talk • contribs)
- KGV (talk • contribs)
- monopolyfreak (talk • contribs)
- GANDALF1992 (talk • contribs)
- Davodd (talk • contribs)
- Jmabel (talk • contribs) - Inactive 19:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
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- pkortge (talk • contribs) - EDUCANG Limited Colleges, South East Queensland, AUSTRALIA
- Davidkinnen (talk • contribs)
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- D-Day (talk • contribs)
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- Ezratrumpet (talk • contribs) Independent schools in the southeastern United States
- Aranda56 (talk • contribs)
- PAE2008 (talk • contribs)
- Metros232 (talk • contribs)
- R6MaY89 (talk • contribs) — need some help with Featured article candidates
- Icelandic Hurricane
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- Arundhati_bakshi (talk • contribs)
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- POKETNRJSH (talk • contribs)
- Genius00345 (talk • contribs) — mainly working on Missouri high schools/school districts
- HGHSTROJAN (talk • contribs) — Hazel Green high school in Madison County, AL
- JYolkowski (talk • contribs)
- DanielES15 (talk • contribs)
- Smoth 007 (talk • contribs)
- Zidel333 (talk • contribs)
- KeepOnTruckin (talk • contribs)
- Alexthemans (talk • contribs) — mainly working on Immnauel Lutheran College
- Terovian (talk • contribs) — Mainly for Sydney (Australia), particularly Northern Beaches Secondary College
- Hjal (talk • contribs) Tamalpais High School and other schools in Marin County, California; Washington High School and other schools in southern Alameda County
- Sukh17 (talk • contribs) [[American High School (Fremont, California}|American High School]] and other public high schools in the Fremont Unified School District in Fremont, California, and other public high schools in the Tri-Cities region in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area also belonging to the unifying athletic league, the Mission Valley Athletic League (MVAL).
- Madeinsane (talk • contribs)
- JimDunning (talk • contribs) — Virginia public schools with a focus on Loudoun County Public Schools; and Wayne County (NY) public schools
- MToolen (talk • contribs) Roxana High School, other Metro East schools if they open up.
- EvaGears (talk • contribs) — Pinkerton Academy and other Southern New Hampshire schools.
- Paschmitts (talk • contribs)
- Sinisterminister (talk • contribs)
- PCSRules1992 (talk • contribs) - Working on the article Live Oak School District
- Miss_Mondegreen (talk • contribs) - Working on University High School (Los Angeles)
- Ponile (talk • contribs)- MMI Preparatory School
- Smbarnzy (talk • contribs) Aquinas College, Perth, Christian Brothers College, Perth, and The Public Schools Association and related articles
- Condem (talk • contribs)
- Oddharmonic (talk • contribs) — schools in Colorado, military academies
- ronbo76 (talk • contribs)
- Alanbly (talk • contribs) Colorado Schools, General Assessing
- Hornandsoccer (talk • contribs) Northeast Ohio Schools, Catholic High Schools, particulary Jesuit ones
- Mensuur (talk • contribs) - Hockerill Anglo-European College
- Scott Swanson (talk • contribs) - Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy and some other schools in NCSSSMST
- wpktsfs - St. Francis de Sales High School (Toledo, Ohio)
- Rockinbuddy - PSHS & Vines High School
- Imaginationac 07:10, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
- 1312020Wikicop (talk • contribs) Pennsylvania Schools
- Bungle44 (talk • contribs) Secondary schools in the United Kingdom, specifically in Sefton and Liverpool
- Camaron1 (talk • contribs) A variety of school articles based in the United Kingdom, though mostly focusing on The Petersfield School article.
- Shindo9Hikaru (talk • contribs) Will be primary focus on California Elementary and middle schools.
- Pcfreakshow (talk • contribs)
- Wildpixs 05:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC) Basically schools in Delhi, India.
- Dahliarose 09:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC) UK schools
- Loopla (talk • contribs) - mainly working on private schools in Sydney
- Bhs itrt 12:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC) - Primarily Battlefield High School at present
- Nbruschi 21:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC) - POV and Jargon must die!
- Givemeornot (talk • contribs)
- Thebestkiano 13:36, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
- Noroton 04:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
- Waggers 11:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC) - UK schools and (having a go at) merging infoboxes
- Fire e23 00:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
- Helmsb 15:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC) Garywood Christian School
- SkipperClipper (talk • contribs)