Talk:grade school
Latest comment: 3 years ago by Misty MH
Dictionaries disagree on this, widely.
Examples of definitions (if I copied them right):
- Oxford New American – said: "grade school | ˈɡrād ˌsko͞ol | noun North American an elementary school", which said "North American a school for the first four to six grades, and usually including kindergarten"; and Lexico.com, another Oxford dictionary says about the same, "North American A school for the first four to six grades, and usually including kindergarten."
- Wiktionary which said Grades 1 through 8.
- A.H.D. said "1. A school for the first four to eight years of a child's formal education, often including kindergarten."; "Also called grade school, grammar school, primary school."
- M.-W. said "a school including usually the first four to the first eight grades and often a kindergarten".
- Cambridge Dictionary adds "a school that provides the first part of a child's education, usually for children between five and eleven years old".
- Macmillan American switches to UK when I brings up the definition, and says that grade school is a primary school which then says "a school for children between the ages of four or five and eleven. In the UK primary schools are sometimes divided into an infant school for the youngest children and a junior school".
- Collins says: "An elementary school is a school where children are taught for the first six or sometimes eight years of their education. ¶ [mainly US] ¶ ...the move from elementary school to middle school or junior high." (COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers).
- I was not able to access the "Webster's New World College Dictionary".
- Note that "grade school" is also often called "elementary school".