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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 private secondary school designed to prepare a student for higher education. Some schools will also include a junior, or elementary, school. There are three types of preparatory schools. Some have facilities in which students reside; most are day schools, and some boarding schools also admit students who reside locally, but who seek the benefits of prep schools. Some admit students of only one gender; others are co-educational. Prep schools are highly selective, academically challenging, and largely independent of state and local controls. The existence of such controls, which are a primary defining characteristic of public, government-operated, elementary and secondary schools, have contributed to the support and growth of prep schools, because these controls are widely viewed by preparatory school proponents as an unacceptable burden on the educational process, and on student outcomes such as university matriculation. Parents of students in the top tier of preparatory schools pay fees that are comparable to tuition at universities.In Canada, preparatory schools blend the American and British traditions. Prep schools are, by design, academically oriented. Low student-to-teacher ratios (half to less than half that of public elementary and secondary schools), excellent facilities, and superior faculties contribute to invariably higher university matriculation rates (on the order of 98% or better). Thus, prep schools are, because of their differing mission as compared to public elementary and secondary schools, both academically dissimilar and academically superior, in both method and substance, to public elementary and secondary schools.
United Kingdom In the United Kingdom the concept of the college or university preparatory school has never had currency; schools are classified in other ways instead. However the term preparatory school, more commonly "prep school" is used in a different way to describe schools which prepare students under thirteen for prestigious fee-paying Public Schools. | ||||||||
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