Template talk:Infobox Secondary school

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[edit] Suggested additional fields

This info box should really have an "Operated by" field, especially given in its international nature. The word "District" has a double meaning (at least). For many it means a physical location. But schools in the bounds of one district may be operated by one of multiple districts, be independent, or be operated by some other private organization (such as a foundation, or religious order).

As an example West Seattle Christian School is in West Seattle school district, but is not operated by the district (though it apparently has some dealing/relationship with them).

Also, its very important to have a place to say "Information current as of" (or equivilent) wording, to say the date applies to (not necessarily the date updated, but when the attendance/principal/etc were last known current according to source). --Rob 06:20, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely right re: "district". As I'd begun branching out into Canada I'd been seeing the limits, what with most of the Canadian "school district" equivalents being called "boards" or the like. I've been trying to come up with something generic to call it, but "operated by" makes it sound like a business venture.  :P Maybe "oversight body"? But that seems too formal. It's easily updated once we come up with something better, though.
I've added oversight_label to introduce some flexibility, but left Oversight as the default for backward compatibility. Hope that's ok. ~ Scribble Monkey 11:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm less sure about the "current as of" part. Most infoboxes don't have that, and individual pieces of information may get updated at different times. I know I've had a lot of entries where I've added some data found on the webpage, but I didn't (and in some cases couldn't) verify each piece. People shouldn't necessarily be using WP for precise info anyway, and if they really want to check when something was last changed, they can poke through the history. /blahedo (t) 02:34, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree, people shouldn't be using us for precise info on attendance (etc), but that's the very reason for giving the date. By putting in the date, it becomes ok if the article isn't updated for years. Somebody in 2010 will see the attendance is "as of 2006" and will know to look to the school for current info. We have many old schools, who've changed attendance drastically, so knowing when the data was current is important. This is the same as census data we include in place articles, which is normally 5-10 years old. Also, exact date/quantity numbers are easier for fact checkers to verify use of sources. We say there are "30,007,094" people in Canada as of 2001; so that anybody can go to StatCan check the number, see it matches perfectly, and know with certainty where the number originated from, and is correct. The reader doesn't care about the last "094" people, but the fact checker does. Let's suppose I, as a fact-checker, see a school article and it says the attendance is about 1500. An external site with attendance informations (usually the schools) says its 1623. Now say there are 111 preschool students. Now, is the reason for the descrpetancy we weren't counting the preschoolers and rounded of the result? Or, is it a 100 new kids enrolled since the last edit was made? Maybe the original editor was looking at an entirely different source of the information (which I should be using). With a precise figure/date, we can quickly determine the answer. --Rob 03:22, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Also, this should allow for address information, through a "address" paramater. Currenlty, I'm just putting this in the "City" field.. --Rob 06:31, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


A few schools did have that in their infobox, and I've been removing it, thinking it was more specific than necessary for infoboxen, and if people wanted it they could look at the article body. (I see they're not actually in the bodies of the two you just updated, oops.) I still think they're a little more website and a little less encyclopaedia, but that said, I like the look and people obviously want the information in. I'll figure out how to integrate it better into the template. /blahedo (t) 02:34, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested field: Primary language of instruction

We may wish to also add a field for "Primary language of instruction" (I'm open to other ideas for terminology). Currently, a few schools I can't yet add the template to are:

For the moment, I think just adding the field "Primary language of instruction" for the template will be sufficient. Any details can be given as part of the data, and not built into the template itself, I think. Details on what secondary languages are taught, can probably be mentioned in the body of the article (not the info box). Also, I'm a little hesitant to mess with the template personally, in fear of breaking something. --Rob 07:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Added: I would assume this would be an optional field, that would only apply when teaching a non-majority langauge (e.g. French outside Quebec in Canada). --Rob 07:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

For schools in this situation, I've been appending e.g. "(French language)" to the "type" field, see e.g. Collège Jeanne-Sauvé. I think that's plenty for the schools entirely run in the non-majority language. For the schools that have an immersion program that doesn't encompass all the students, I don't think that should be noted the same way in the infobox—there are lots of different special programs that different high schools have, and language immersion is just one of them. That's good fodder for the main body of the article, I think. Or, if it's really an integral part of the school's identity, you could always use a free_label, e.g.
| free_label_1 = Special programs
| free_1 = French language immersion (200 students); Special education magnet program (130 students)
and so on.
For template editing, use a sandbox: edit Template:Infobox Secondary school, select all, and copy; then edit a page named User:Thivierr/Foo and paste it in. Any editing you do there won't affect existing articles. To see the effect on an article, edit that article and substitute "{{User:Thivierr/Foo" for the first line of the infobox, and then preview it. Once you're satisfied, you can then copy-and-paste your wikicode back into the main infobox template. /blahedo (t) 23:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested field: Nickname

IMHO, this template should have an optional "Nickname" field, as in athletic nickname. The name of a school's mascot is not necessarily related to its athletic nickname, and even if it is, one may not always be able to guess the nickname from the mascot name. Matter of fact, I'll be semi-bold and add in the "nickname" field, but put it in comments so that it won't be activated until there's a consensus for including it. — Dale Arnett 04:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Update: Decided against adding it right now. I'll let everyone decide. — Dale Arnett 04:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Since you're talking about the name of the athletic team(s), why not call it exactly that? It's often incorrect to apply that name to the entire school population, and lots of schools have nicknames for the school or the students that aren't the names of their teams. RossPatterson 04:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Good point. I'll wait a few days to see if there are any other comments, and then follow up with your suggestion. — Dale Arnett 06:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I agree that athletic teams should be added. --Howard the Duck 04:53, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] International Section

Many of the pages using the Template:Infobox School2 could easily be ported to this template. However, many of the pages require a 'Teaching Staff' field. Based on discussions on other templates, these should not be put under 'faculty'. Could someone add a 'Teaching Staff' field? --W. Flake ( talk | contribs ) 19:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I think I've managed to add it. Scribble Monkey 12:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Error

Currently this template is not displaying the Students parameter correctlly. I tried to fix this, but it didn't work. Can someone who knows more about these templates of templates please fix this --T-rex 19:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Could you give an example of a page where it isn't working? I just looked at a few and it seems fine. /blahedo (t) 23:16, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't work on Mount Miguel High School or Lancaster High School (Lancaster, New York) --T-rex 23:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is with pages that specify more than one of the parameters students=, enrollment=, and enrolment=, like Mount Miguel High School or Lancaster High School (Lancaster, New York). In both cases, "enrollment = empty" overrode "enrolment = empty" which overrode "students = something", leading to an empty student display. I fixed both pages by deleting the empty enrollment= and enrolment=. The template probably should be fixed to tolerate this case, I'll look into it. RossPatterson 01:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks --T-rex 01:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Template is fixed. You still shouldn't code more than one of those with a non-empty value, but the template will ignore the empty ones like the doc says it should. RossPatterson 02:17, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Location formatting

Location doesn't appear to be separating the different elements correctly with spaces or line breaks. If you set City, State & Country, City is followed by a comma and a new line, but State and Country are joined into a single text string. It would be good if each element was on its own line. Scribble Monkey 13:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use of term 'grades'

Would it be possible to either amend or replace the term 'grades' in this infobox, as we do not use the word in the UK. For us, the term 'Year' is used, and would be more appropriate. Tafkam 18:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've added grades_label which you can set to "Years", "Age Range", or anything else that you'd prefer. ~ Scribble Monkey 11:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Well it needs to be a lot clearer because I don't understand how it works and I'm not the only one as it is being misused on British articles. This is Yankee cultural imperialism. RegRCN 19:48, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I think it's perfectly clear, as it follows the same usage as other labels tags in the form; I suspect the only reason UK schools still have them labelled as grades is that the infobox was entered into the article before the new tag was added, and hasn't been changed. I'm just about changing some that I've done now. Tafkam 08:41, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Assistant, vice principal

I had a failed attempt to add "assistant principal" and "vice principal" as fields below "principal." Using the "free label" option is not very effective, because then the label falls too far from "principal." Anyway, would anyone please explain how editing the code works, or edit it for me? I would have thought that a copy/paste/replace job would do it, but unfortunately it didn't. I reverted my failed attempt. Thanks, — Emiellaiendiay 02:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Care to explain how it didn't work? A quick check of the code you added looks like it should have. RossPatterson 04:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Dare I ask: do we really need to include the vice principal here? Is this information ever going to be of encyclopaedic interest? /blahedo (t) 04:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with blahedo. Vice-principals seem to be a bit too narrow for encyclopedic purposes. In my opinion, the assistant principals seem to be the middle-managers of the school. Surely middle management would not be included in a business's infobox. Any other thoughts? —W. Flake (talk) 21:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Certainly if you carried equivalent usage across in the UK, we'd have Headteachers, Deputy headteachers and Assistant Headteachers - that could be 10 members of staff in some larger schools. One 'chief exec' is enough in my opinion. Tafkam 21:51, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Template:Infobox School?

Is there any reason why this template couldn't be merged into Template:Infobox School, simplifying the world and avoiding duplicate and divergent development?

Jordan Brown 07:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes. The wording on this template is completely inappropriate for UK schools. (We don't have grades, districts and presidents for instance.) Dahliarose 23:46, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

So this is intended for UK schools? That could be clearer.
With respect to the points you raise, it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to have a set of optional parameters that are appropriate for US schools, and a different set that are appropriate for UK schools, with the remainder common. Jordan Brown 05:29, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
You're right and several already exist; the most basic being colors and colours. The problem is that once a parameter like grades is introduced, it has to remain in place in case it is used somewhere. In that particular case I have added grades_label which allows UK schools to user the term "Years" instead, but I had to default it to "Grades" for backward compatibility. Similarly, I added oversight_label which allows UK schools to use "LEA" and US schools to use "District". The use of labels is much more flexible and reduces the number of different parameters, IMHO. ~ Scribble Monkey 11:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Custom labels are more flexible, but more verbose on each entry. They also fail to force standardization (is it "District" or "School District" or "Local District" or...?). That said, certainly the distinction is a secondary one compared to the duplication with the other template. Jordan Brown 22:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with template

I think someone has messed around with the template. There are some surplus {{ symbols appearing on pages using this template. Does anyone know how to fix it? Dahliarose 23:46, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Athletics

May I ask what should be filled in for athletics? --Mr.crabby (Talk) 21:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] America is not the only country on Earth

This template is being foisted on British schools, but we do not have "grades" we have years. Can someone who understands the syntax please add this as an option? Thank you. RegRCN 19:46, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The solution is to amend grades_label from Grades to Years. TerriersFan 19:34, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] background color

Is there any consensus to remove the background color for the logo box? It seems like the default should be to have a transparent background there (mostly because the white box looks out of place). Esrever 21:35, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image caption text without picture image

Here's a suggestion for an improvement by someone who knows much more than I do about templates. If there is no image in the picture field, then do not display the image caption text. Sometimes (often?) the image is deleted (via prod or speedy-delete) and the caption text remains. For example, User:ImageRemovalBot deleted the image link in the infobox in the Walter Panas High School article because the image had been speedy-deleted, which caused the caption to appear as seemingly-random text near the top of the article, see here. I have talked with the Bot owner and he is not sure the Bot can be made smart enough to delete the caption with the image link. Maybe the user box template can do it? Truthanado 00:07, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The template can't be made smart enough to cope with what ImageRemovalBot does. If the bot simply deleted the image reference, that's something the template could work with. But it doesn't - it replaces it with an HTML comment. Templates can compare a parameter with any fixed value, and with no value, but they can't do things like looking for a leading "<!--". Sorry. RossPatterson 02:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Telephone

I just removed the recently-added "Telephone number" field. I don't see how it's useful or appropriate to have that kind of directory information in an encyclopedia article. If someone needs that kind of contact information they should visit the school's website or look it up in a directory. --ElKevbo 03:41, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture parameter

When compared to Template:Infobox nrhp, is it really necessary to have "[[Image:Charlotte High (Florida).JPG|253px]]" rather than just "Charlotte High (Florida).JPG"? Also, I've noticed Infobox nrhp makes images more sharper. « FMF » 19:54, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Student Body President

The Student Body President field was recently added. Is this really needed and appropriate? It's difficult to believe that this would satisfy Wikipedia notability standards. Also, the parameter has not been completely added to the template; there is nothing about it in the Blank template and Optional fields (instructions) sections. Truthanado 09:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I removed the parameter pending further discussion. --ElKevbo 11:58, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Address necessary?

Is street address (the "Address" parameter) really necessary? It doesn't seem like a necessary piece of information in an encyclopedia article. --ElKevbo 18:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Possibly not. It is used in many high school articles so I would hesitate to remove it. It does provide a more precise location than just the town or city, which can be useful since many towns and cities have several high schools. I would support either way: keep or remove. I suggest we keep the address field unless there is an overwhelming reason to remove it. I guess that makes me a weak keep. Truthanado 11:30, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't see it as bad information to have but I would suggest that if a reader wants that kind of detailed information they should go to the institution's website or contact the institution. My concern isn't so much the addresses themselves as it is a sensitivity to not make the infobox overwhelmingly long or overly complex. --ElKevbo 14:19, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed that we should keep the infobox as simple as possible. Maybe we should just freeze the template and not allow any more changes. The infobox is about to celebrate its 2nd birthday, and I suspect everything that should be in the template is there by now. Truthanado 00:31, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested Faculty Education

I am working on the article for Christian Brothers High School (Memphis) and came across one thing that might be a possible field to consider. What about some sort of field listing the minimum education of the faculty. An example would be that the aforementioned school has faculty with no less than a masters. ~Dan9186 November 10, 2007 08:29 (UTC)

Nah. Doesn't sound like it would universal enough to place in an infobox. Definitely worth mentioning in the prose, though! --ElKevbo 15:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SAT & ACT Scores

Would it seem reasonable at all to include a parameter for average SAT and ACT scores of the school? -- Dan9186(T • E • C) December 21, 2007 06:19 (UTC)

I guess my question would be why? I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just curious as to what it adds to the infobox and thus to the transcluded articles. Cheers! Esrever (klaT) 16:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
The two are some statistics that some schools like to place out there for general knowledge for one. I find it to be something worth mentioning about a school as it says something about their academic preparations, however I would feel that it would be slightly difficult to include smoothly in the prose. There just isn't enough to say about it other that "average ACT score." -- Dan9186(T • E • C) December 21, 2007 23:03 (UTC)
Well, I would argue that it says nothing about a school other than the fact that its students do well (or not) on a test whose value as a predictor of academic success is debatable anyway. But that's neither here nor there.  :P I'm weakly opposed to the idea of adding this to the infobox, but if consensus indicates that it's worth keeping, I'd certainly acquiesce to that. Esrever (klaT) 07:38, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm guessing these are US things? Not entirely in keeping with the global nature of Wiki, really. Certainly wouldn't know what they represented here in the UK (or worse, would confuse them with our own SATs which are a very different ball game. Tafkam (talk) 19:00, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes SAT and ACT are a US thing that are typically important for entering into the universities after highschool. I know very little about UK schools however is there not a form of test of such that is an important part of continuing onto a given university? If there is, I would certainly think that making the test label where it could be specified based on the nationality of the school should be little of an issue. -- Dan9186(T • E • C) December 23, 2007 19:13 (UTC)
Well, arguably you could use A-levels, but that couldn't be consistently applied because of the variation in school types which do and don't offer such courses. It's also not something that is of wide interest in the UK. I don't really see that it would add much to an article really. If people are interested in such data, surely there are places where they can find it much more readily and reliably than hoping that each article will get updated in good time each year? Tafkam (talk) 21:23, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, you do make a good point about the information needing to be updated on a regular basis is a very good point. I was looking at this as a possibility to provide a sort of academic standing for schools that could be put in the infobox. I guess I can agree to an opposition to the field unless someone can suggest a more reasonable idea for a field. -- Dan9186(T • E • C) December 24, 2007 05:15 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions

  1. Wouldn't it be nicer if we have "Location" go to the top as how Template:Infobox School is?
  2. Adding another parameter: coordinates?

I know nothing about editing templates so someone else will need to do it if everyone agrees. Thank you. — Yurei-eggtart 10:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested field - namesake

A lot of schools are named after notable people, and a lot of these people have Wikipedia articles, which would make a link to them in the infobox handy. Even for those who don't have Wikipedia articles, actually, a namesake field would be at least interesting. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 19:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image field

Any objection to adding changing the image fields similar to either Template:Infobox School or Template:Infobox University? Right now there are two picture fields, picture and picture2 but they do not work quite the same way and are at the end of the box instead of at the beginning. SayCheeeeeese (talk) 07:16, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I suspect that due to it already being used it isn't practical to make changes. SayCheeeeeese (talk) 07:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] help.

the article of Washburn Rural High School is not quite working right.

i tried putting this in {{Infobox Secondary school | name = Washburn Rural High School | logo = | established = [[1918]] | type = [[Public school|Public]] [[Secondary school|secondary school]] | gender = Male & Female | principal = Ed Raines | asst principal = Robert Gladfelter (seniors)<br>Chris Ridley (Grades 9-11, Last names begin with H-O)<br> Kyle Reed (Grades 9-11, Last names begin with A-G)<br>David LaFevre (Grades 9-11, Last names begin with P-Z) | founder = Unknown | faculty = 112 | enrollment = 1,605 | grades = [[Ninth grade|9]]-[[Twelfth grade|12]] | address = 5900 SW 61st Stree | city = [[Topeka, Kansas|Topeka] | state = [[Kansas]] | country = [[United States|USA]] | district = Auburn-Washburn [[Unified school district|USD]] 437 | colors = [[White]] and [[Blue]] {{color box|white}} {{color box|blue}} | mascot = Junior Blue | yearbook = ''Chimes'' | newspaper = ''Blue Streak'' | testname = Grade 11 Reading | testaverage = 84% | website = [http://www.wrhs.net/ www.wrhs.net] | nickname = "Junior Blues" | picture = Wrhs.gif | image_caption = the front of WRHS }} and it didn't go into an infobox. LukeTheSpook (talk) 01:54, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Fixed it. apparently after the city there was a missing ]. that about drove me crazy. LukeTheSpook (talk) 02:04, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Need help again, the images i put in the infobox for that article are not showing up...LukeTheSpook (talk) 17:24, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorted. Tafkam (talk) 00:03, 7 April 2008 (UTC)