A college-preparatory school (usually shortened to preparatory school or prep school) is a type of

secondary school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

. The term refers to

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichk ...

, private independent or parochial schools primarily designed to prepare students for

higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completi ...

North America

United States

In the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

, there are

, private, and

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the ...

college preparatory schools that can be either parochial or

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

. Admission is sometimes based on specific selection criteria, usually academic, but some schools have open enrollment. In 2017, 5.7 million students were enrolled in US private elementary or secondary schools, constituting 10% of total school enrollment. Of those, 1.4 million students were enrolled in a secular (nonsectarian) school. Public and charter college preparatory schools are typically connected to a local

school district A school district is a special-purpose district that operates local public primary and secondary schools in various nations. North America United States In the U.S, most K–12 public schools function as units of local school districts, wh ...

and draw from the entire district instead of the closest

school zone A school zone refers to an area on a street near a school or near a crosswalk leading to a school that has a likely presence of younger pedestrians. School zones generally have a reduced speed limit during certain hours. Fines Fines for speed ...

. Some offer specialized courses or curricula that prepare students for a specific field of study. In contrast, others use the label as a promotional tool without offering programs different from a conventional high school. Preparatory schools began before the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policie ...

, when there were no public schools above the

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school, ...

or elementary level anywhere in the US. Their graduates were not ready for

college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...

study, so many colleges set up "preparatory academies" to prepare them for college study. The preparatory division could dwarf the college enrollment, as at New York Central College. There were also preparatory schools unaffiliated with colleges, especially for girls, such as the Columbia Female Academy. At the time, men and women did not study together at any level, and there were no

women's colleges Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male stu ...

. Some of the female preparatory schools became women's colleges after the Civil War. Free high school level education for all became available in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Since then, the surviving "prep schools" in the US are primarily private, elite institutions that have very selective admission criteria and high

tuition fees Tuition payments, usually known as tuition in American English and as tuition fees in Commonwealth English, are fees charged by education institutions for instruction or other services. Besides public spending (by governments and other public b ...

, catering to students in the 13–18 age range. Little financial aid other than loans is available. Prep schools can be

day school A day school — as opposed to a boarding school — is an educational institution where children and adolescents are given instructions during the day, after which the students return to their homes. A day school has full-day programs when compar ...

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of " room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exte ...

s, or both, and may be

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...

or single-sex. Currently, day schools are more common than boarding, and since the 1970s, co-educational schools have been more common than single-sex. Unlike the public schools which are free, they charge tuition ($10,000 to 40,000+ a year in 2014). Some prep schools are affiliated with a particular religious denomination. Unlike parochial (Catholic) schools, independent preparatory schools are not governed by a religious organization, and students are usually not required to receive instruction in one particular religion. While independent prep schools in the United States are not subject to government oversight or regulation, many are

accredited Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body (such as certification body, inspection body or laboratory) against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to ...

by one of the six regional accreditation agencies for educational institutions.

Asia

Japan

In Japan, college-prep schools are called , which means a school used to progress into another school. Prep schools in Japan are usually considered prestigious and are often difficult to get into. However, there are many tiers of prep schools, the entry into which depends on the university that the school leads into.William K. Cummings, ''Education and equality in Japan'' (Princeton University Press, 2014). Japanese prep schools started as , secondary schools for boys, which were founded after the secondary school law in 1886. Later, , secondary school for girls (1891), and , vocational schools (1924), were included among and were legally regarded as schools on the same level as a school for boys. However, graduates from those two types of schools had more requirements for college entrance. In the modern period, many Japanese secondary schools were five-year schools, except for during a short term from 1943 to 1946. The social status of , or , secondary schools for boys under the old system, did not disappear even after the new system (6-3-3) took effect in 1947. Plenty of are six-year schools in modern times, and many of them have their origins in and , or ones attached to universities. Japanese pupils who aspire to a prep school education take written examinations in sixth grade in each prep school. Unlike six-year prep schools, the top municipal senior high school (three-year schools) in each school zone and some high-ranked private senior high schools (ditto) are also regarded as . In the 21st century, some trial cases connecting public junior and senior high schools are seen in each region, too, broadening the education for college entrance. As the Japanese government provides

grant-in-aid A grant-in-aid is money coming from a central government for a specific project. Such funding is usually used when the government and the legislature decide that the recipient should be publicly funded but operate with reasonable independence ...

to private schools, the tuition is 5,000–10,000 US dollars per year, even if it is a private school.

References

External links

The Independent Schools Directory (Global)

National Association of Independent Schools

Independent Schools Association of the Southwest

Canadian Association of Independent Schools

The Association of Boarding Schools
{{Authority control High schools and secondary schools School types *