Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in Canada

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

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 The previous project has been archived. The corresponding talk page has also been archived.

Scope

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

In short:

  • elementary schools
  • middle schools
  • secondary schools
  • CEGEPs (Quebec)
  • school boards

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

Similar or Related WikiProjects

Task forces

The higher education task force is defunct and has been archived.

Participants

Anyone can participate. Some people also advertise a specific area of interest. Of particular interest is geographic location, in case someone needs a picture of a specific school.

If you add {{User WP Education in Canada}} to your user page, you will then show up in Category:WikiProject Education in Canada participants.

Active members:

Username Joined Location Knowledgable with templates Provinces and territories of interest Other notes
Rob November 2005 Calgary sorta Alberta+ Mainly taking/uploading pictures of Calgary schools lately.
Dylan December 2006 Edmonton Kinda Alberta Mainly the creation of pages for existing Alberta schools.
Stephane Charette February 2006 Kelowna, BC yes BC, ON interested in French-language schools (but not currently participating on Wikipedia due to WP:SCHOOL and WP:SCHOOLS3...)
Usgnus March 2006 BC yes BC interested in schools that intersect with Wikipedia:WikiProject Vancouver
EverettColdwell April 2006 NS
Chabuk May 2006 Montreal, QC Somewhat ON, PQ, AB interested in universities and colleges
zeChinaman May 2006 ON no...would like to learn ON education in hamilton...i think
cpastern June 2006 only a little working on colleges and universities, organizing lists/categories etc.
Buchanan-Hermit June 2006 Yes. BC I'm based out of Richmond, BC, but I am interested in working on public schools in the Greater Vancouver Regional District (particularly with providing photos of schools -- see my userpage for some school pics without articles).
Deenoe July 2006 Ottawa, ON Yes ON, PQ I live in Ottawa, Ontario and I go to École secondaire publique De La Salle and I wish to pass my knowledge on the surrounding schools of my area and to help the project.
mmn100 July 2006 Norfolk County, ON Yes ON I would like to help with schools in Norfolk County, Ontario.
PKT August 2006 Holland Landing, ON Just a bit ON Interested in developing York Region and Essex County, grew up (smirk!) in Windsor.
lovelaughterlife September 2006 Barrie, ON A little ON Interested in developing Simcoe County Schools
Code E October 2006 Dartmouth, NS Not yet, soon hopefully NS Interested in developing articles that deal with schools in the Dartmouth area, possibly taking pictures.
Phoenix2 October 2006 Lethbridge, Alta. Yes AB
Smcafirst January 2007 Markham, Ontario Some Knowledge Knows a lot of schools in York Region (Mostly elementary and a few high school, since I grow up in York Region.
Vvuser March 2007 Ottawa, Ontario No, however willing to learn. Ottawa, Ontario I would like to expand articles that already exist or start articles.
Yvesnimmo April 2007 Moncton, New Brunswick Sort of. New Brunswick
Dybabdulwadud February 2011 Edmundston, New-Brunswick Yes NB I plan to work on schools in northwestern New-Brunswick. Also a participant of WikiProject Universities.
Xtreme racer May 2007 Peterborough, Ontario Knowledge Peterborough, Ontario I wish to improve some of the current Peterborough education articles, add pictures of the schools, and make new articles for the many schools not mentioned that exist in Peterborough
~NeonFire372~ December 2007 Newfoundland & Labrador Not really Newfoundland & Labrador
chamberlain2007 April 2008 Halifax, Nova Scotia Good Nova Scotia None Really...
SriMesh April 2008 Saskatoon, SK Average Saskatchewan Have created SK - education - school related articles, and helped raise one to GA :-) Have uploaded photos in this area.
StarryWorld May 2008 Ontario Average Ontario Creating an education article about a school currently.
Skyezx May 2008 BC Average BC Interested in public elementary&secondary schools and universities in the Vancouver area.
Jordan June 2008 Ontario Can't design yet Ontario Interested in the government funding being split
Caitlin July 2008 Toronto, Ontario yes Ontario have updated many pages for Queen's University, University of Toronto and Lorne Park Secondary School.
Callaslily July 2008 Ontario yes Ontario elearning
Keyboard Therapy January 2009 Ontario Ontario
Anshikuu February 2009 Ontario Yes Ontario, Quebec, and BC Good with infoboxes and navboxes
Spock of Vulcan November 2010 Winnipeg, Manitoba Manitoba, especially Winnipeg Planning to take and upload pictures of Winnipeg schools, and work on the articles, too. I'll be more active after December 2010. Waiting until spring to take pictures when they'll look nicer.
Leventio April 2011 Ontario Average Ontario Focused on post-secondary education pages
CanadianWikiUser July 2011 New Brunswick Yes New Brunswick I seek to improve pages concerning public schools and school districts in New Brunswick.
069952497a February 2013 Markham, Ontario Very little Ontario I am focused on education in Ontario, particularly in the GTA and YRDSB, as well as mathematics education in Canada as a whole.
Callmemirela June 2017 Montreal, Quebec Average Quebec My interests include CEGEPs and universities of both language of instructions in Quebec.
WayneBu November 2018 Malaysia (originally from Toronto) Average National My interests include post-secondary in Canada, the Caribbean and Francophone education outside Quebec. Also interested in technology in education and international schools.
Ansony89 January 2024 Edmonton Average AB, QC Universities in Alberta and Québec

Inactive/past members:

Username Joined Location Knowledgable with templates Provinces and territories of interest Other notes
Spinboy October 2005 has left Wikipedia
TDS October 2005
Cam November 2005
CyclePat November 2005
Onishenko December 2005 AB
Andy Shen December 2005 BC
Ardenn December 2005 has left Wikipedia (as of Aug. 2006)
Wakemp May 2006 BC BC K-12 Schools and Districts in BC

Achievements

Featured articles

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

Featured lists

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

Good articles

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


Naming conventions

Names of school boards or school districts

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

Names of schools

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

Abbreviation Expanded
BTI Business And Technical Institute
CI Collegiate Institute
ES Elementary School
HS High School
Jr Junior
MS Middle School
Mt Mount
PS Public School
Sr Senior
SS Secondary School
St Saint
  1. If the school board's web site and the school's web site differ in the name of a school, prefer the one that people commonly use. Schools at times will be known under a slightly different name than the official or legal school name. Consider whether or not a redirection page is necessary.
  2. Expand all common abbreviations in the school's name. For example, a school known as Main Street HS would be turned into an article called Main Street High School. See the table on the right for examples of common abbreviations often found in school names.
  3. Proper names may or may not be abbreviated depending on how the name is commonly used. Two opposite examples:
  4. Abbreviations in the school name -- such as A. Y. Jackson -- contain periods after the letter and a blank space after each period. For example:

Names for categories

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

Names for navboxes

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

Names for templates

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

French names

Institutions shouldn't be renamed. Use the name of the school or school board, as it is commonly known. Note that this also affects capitalization in the article title, since French dictates that articles and adjectives in a name are not capitalized. For example:

Structure

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

Universities and colleges

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

Elementary, middle, and high schools

  1. always start with a standardized template; see {{Infobox Education in Canada}}, and schools that use this template for examples of how to use this template
  2. create the relevant sections in the article; examples:
    1. History
    2. Academics
    3. Athletics
    4. Departments
    5. Staff (note: this should not be a listing of regular staff)
    6. ...need more examples of section headings
  3. the article typically shouldn't need to link to other schools; instead, use the feeders field from the infobox, or the navigation bar at the bottom of the article
  4. below any See also and External links sections, insert (don't subst!) the appropriate navigation bar; most schools should have a navigation bar linking together schools from the same school district (there is a discussion in progress as to what to do with very large or very small school boards where a navbox isn't a viable solution)
  5. below the navigation bar, if necessary, insert (don't subst!) one of the appropriate stub template:
  6. lastly, at the bottom of the article should be the appropriate categories (more on this below)
  7. on the very top of the school's talk page, use the template {{WikiProject Canada|education=yes|[province menmonic]=yes|class=|importance=}}

School boards

  1. always start with a standardized template; there isn't 1 single Canada-wide template to use:
    1. BC: {{Infobox BC School District}}
    2. All others: {{Infobox Canadian School District}}
  2. school boards typically have a table of schools, and don't directly use the navigation bar; see examples from the list of Canadian school boards (e.g., School District 43 Coquitlam)
  3. if necessary, insert (don't subst!) one of the appropriate stub template:
  4. at the bottom of the article should be the appropriate categories (more on this below)
  5. note that individual school boards typically shouldn't have categories to group the schools together; instead, use the navboxes to group schools together; this will need to be discussed for school boards with too many or too few schools to use a navbox
  6. on the very top of the school board's talk page, use the template {{WikiProject Canada|education=yes|[province menmonic]=yes|class=|importance=}}
Lastly, most school boards -- as a service to the individual school articles for that board -- will provide a navbox to help users navigate from one school to another within the school board. See the standardized template {{Navbox Education in Canada}}, and the information below describing how to use {{Navbox Education in Canada}}. Note that navboxes likely wont work for school boards with too many or too few schools. These school boards will need to be discussed here and the project will be updated once we know how to handle these cases.

Article alerts

Articles for deletion

Proposed deletions

Featured list candidates

Good article nominees

Good article reviews

Peer reviews

Requested moves

Logos

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

Schools

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

This can be easily done using the template: {{subst:School rationale | Article name | source | copyright holder }} though the category is the more general Category:Academic institution logos.

School boards

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

Universities, colleges, and CEGEPs

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

This can be easily done using the template: {{subst:School rationale | Article name | source | copyright holder }} though the category is the more general Category:Academic institution logos.

Teams

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

Pictures

Uploading pictures

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

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

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

Pictures needed

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

Province City School Requested
BC Port Coquitlam Terry Fox Secondary School Stephane Charette
ON Alliston Banting Memorial High School Stephane Charette
ON Barrie Eastview Secondary School Lovelaughterlife
ON Barrie Barrie Central Collegiate Institute Lovelaughterlife
ON Barrie Barrie North Collegiate Institute Lovelaughterlife
ON Mississauga Cawthra Park Secondary School Stephane Charette
ON Mississauga Clarkson Secondary School Décartes
ON Toronto A. Y. Jackson Secondary School (Toronto) Stephane Charette
ON Toronto North Toronto Collegiate Institute Stephane Charette
ON Whitby Donald A Wilson Secondary School Ô
ON Goderich Goderich District Collegiate Institute lilthor11
ON Toronto The York School Cardamon
ON Toronto York Mills C.I. Nathaniel Tang


Templates

School infoboxes

School board infoboxes

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

School board navboxes

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

Talk pages

  • The top of talk pages for schools, school boards, universities, colleges and templates should be tagged with the banner
    {{WikiProject Canada|class=|importance=|education=yes|[province mnemonic]=yes}}

School and school board stub templates

For schools and school boards, use the following stubs:

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

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

College and university stub template

Both colleges and universities may use {{Canada-university-stub}}.

University ranking template

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

Categories

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

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

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

Lists

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

Decisions from previous discussions

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

Problem/Decision/Solution School/District/Talk page Date Other notes
University Presidents are inherently notable. AfD October 5, 2005
Post-secondary student newspapers are notable. AfD February 10, 2005
Incidents such as hazing that meet WP:V merit inclusion in an article. Talk:McGill University/Archive 1 December 17, 2005
Student union articles (for post-secondary schools), should use the most common name, not the legal name. Talk:University of Alberta Students' Union January, 2006
Individual dorms are not inherently notable. AfD February, 2006
Faculty associations are not notable. AfD February 10, 2006
Student council members are rarely notable enough to warrant mentioning in the school articles. David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute May 19-28, 2006
The infobox's URL field should link to the official school web site, or to the school's page on the school board web server. Use the External links section of the article to link to a 3rd party or student-run web site. A. Y. Jackson Secondary School (Toronto) March 2006
BC's school districts will be named "School District ## Name"; see Talk:List of school districts in British Columbia. Note this is not universal across Canada (e.g., list of Ontario school boards). List of school districts in British Columbia May 2006
School boards with more than X or less than Y schools cannot use navboxes (they could, but the navboxes look somewhat ridiculus); the solution is to...? (See the project's talk page for discussion.) Calgary Board of Education, or TDSB June 2006
The common English spelling for Québec's CEGEP is CEGEP. (Not CÉGEP, nor Cégep, nor ...) Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education in Canada May 31 2006 However, also consider French names.
Templates such as {{Infobox Education in Canada}}, {{Canadian School District}} and even {{WikiProject Canada|education=yes}} which is used on talk pages should never be subst:. (This allows us to use what links here, or to roll out template changes without having to re-edit hundreds of articles.) Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education in Canada June 1-4 2006
The WP:FN method of referencing information (combined with things like {{cite}} described at WP:CTT) is a great way to cite external references. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education in Canada June 8 2006
Affiliate/federated colleges are not in themselves degree-granting institutions, and thus don't merit separate inclusion in templates or lists. Template talk:Ont Uni August 7, 2007
Historic university or college buildings are notable. AfD August 11, 2007
Fees of a University or College don't merit inclusion in an article. Talk:Kwantlen Student Association August 19, 2007
Student union executives don't merit inclusion in an article about the union unless they're notable outside of those activities and have a Wikipedia article already. University of Alberta Students' Union August 19, 2007


Tools

Main tool page: toolserver.org
  • Reflinks - Edits bare references - adds title/dates etc. to bare references
  • Checklinks - Edit and repair external links
  • Dab solver - Quickly resolve ambiguous links.
  • Peer reviewer - Provides hints and suggestion to improving articles.
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