Preparatory school

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A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school (usually abbreviated to preparatory school, college prep school, or prep school) is a secondary school, usually private, designed to prepare students for a college or university education. Some schools will also include a junior, or elementary, school. This designation is mainly current in North America. In many parts of Europe, such as Germany, the Benelux and Scandinavia secondary schools specializing in college-preparatory education are called Gymnasiums.

History

In Europe, preparatory schools originated out of the turmoil from the Protestant Reformation, which helped to dislodge the grip of the Catholic Church on many areas of life, including education. The concept was also inspired and developed based on the new ideals of Humanism. Individual schools that taught and focused more upon rhetoric, grammar, logic, mathematics, astronomy, music, and geometry more than the traditional curriculum of theology began to spring up in the German states.

In the United States, preparatory schools were first designed to prepare the male children of wealthy parents for universities. Charging tution, these schools instructed students in the classical curriculum of Greek and Latin.. A rise in the middle class around the beginning of the 19th century meant that more and more parents could afford to send their children to univerisities, which meant that preparatory school enrollment improved as well. While these schools flourished, the establishment of public high schools towards the end of the 19th century threatened the survival of preparatory schools, since public schools were free. However, preparatory schools remained in the United States as schools that the wealthy and upper class could send their children to, since the private schools had become more selective..

Organization

Nearly all preparatory schools in the United States and Canada are private institutions, which means that they are not funded through taxes, nor are they administered by publically elected school boards. Schools that are religiously affliated are sometime funded partially or entirely by their church, while some schools must rely upon the tuition they charges as their main source of income. Often time these private schools are run by a Governing Board of Trustees, in conjuction with a headmaster or principle. Religious schools, such as Catholic preparatory schools in the United States, are governed by the Catholic Church. While not administered by the government, these schools must still comply with cirriculum requirements and educational standards set by the state.

Some schools have living quarters (dormitory, dining room) where students reside (known as boarding schools); most are day schools, and some boarding schools also admit local students who seek the benefits of the prep school life. Some admit students of only one sex; others are co-educational. Prep schools tend to be selective, and academically challenging.

Parents of top-tier prep school students pay fees comparable to Ivy League university tuition. Among the principal benefits of prep schools is a very low student-to-teacher ratio, hence, smaller class sizes than in public schools. The tuition allows schools to hire highly-qualified teachers and retain them in tenure. These schools often have significant endowments financing scholarships permitting demographic heterogeneity.

Preparatory schools place a strong emphasis on sports (see The Ten Schools Admissions Organization, Independent School Leagues or Ivy Preparatory School League). In many private schools students are required to participate in one or more of the school's sports teams. University-preparatory education is also often associated with the preppy subculture.

Cultural Variations

France

In France, certain private or public secondary schools offer special postgraduate classes called classes préparatoires, equivalent in level to the first years of university, for students who wish to prepare for the competitive exams for the entrance in the Grandes écoles. French classes préparatoires are exceptionally intensive and selective, taking only the very best students graduating from high schools but generally not charging fees.

Germany

A gymnasium constitutes the middle or last tier of secondary education, preparing students to enter university. Deriving from the Greek idea of a school for both physical and intellectual education, the German gymnasium school developed based on ideals of Humanism in a move away from church-dominated theologically based education, and was designed for those students of the highest academic ability.

Originally the gymnasium was designed to provide a broad-based, albeit academically oriented, education. The final examination on completing studies at the gymnasium has been used as the main admissions criterion for German universities. Today, however, students may specialize in more practical areas of study, such as technology, or, in certain vocational gymnasia, combine their studies with vocational training.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom schools are classified in other ways. The term preparatory school, more commonly "prep school," is used to describe schools which traditionally prepare younger students for independent schools, although not all preparatory-school students continue their education within the independent-education sector, and not all students at independent secondary schools have started theirs at preparatory schools.

A Preparatory School, or Prep School in the United Kingdom, and previously in the British Empire and so the Commonwealth in current English usage, is an independent school designed to prepare a student for fee-paying, secondary independent school (public school). Whilst many prep schools prepare their students for entry to a range of senior schools, some are closely associated with a single school, as Colet Court is with St Paul's School.

Some state Grammar schools which are otherwise free have a fee-paying Prep Department. Examples include Sullivan Upper School in Holywood and Bangor Grammar School, Bangor, County Down, both in Northern Ireland.

Prep Schools are for eight to thirteen year olds, when they take Common Entrance Examination for entry into a Public School, (under the age of eight, pupils are educated at a "pre-prep" school, which takes the place of a state primary school). Thus, independently educated boys and girls will, from 4 or 5 to 8 years old, go to a pre-prep school, from 8 to 13 years old to a prep school and. from 13 to 18 years old to a public school .

Girls' private schools in England tend to follow the age ranges of state schools more closely than those for boys. Thus, a girls preparatory school will usually admit girls from 5 to 11 years old who will continue on to public school, no age 13 intake.

This usage of the term is in contrast to "prep school" outside the United Kingdom and a few other Commonwealth countries, which is usually taken to mean a university-preparatory school. Like public schools and other secondary-level prep schools elsewhere in the world, most British prep schools are boarding schools.

The Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools (IAPS) is the prep schools' heads' association serving the top 500+ independent prep schools in the UK and worldwide, with a total of 130,000 pupils. IAPS is one of seven affiliated associations of the Independent Schools Council (ISC).

External links

All links Retrieved December 11, 2007.

• Canadian Association of Independent Schools
• Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools
• Independent Schools Council
• Independent Schools Association of the Southwest
• National Association of Independent Schools
• The Association of Boarding Schools
• UK Prep School Directory
• Wilbraham & Monson Academy

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