Collegiate institute

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A collegiate institute is a general term that can refer either to a school of secondary education or higher education.

[edit] Canada

In Canada, collegiate institute has a more specific meaning. In 1871, the province of Ontario set up two parallel secondary education systems. Collegiate institutes offered arts and humanities education, including Greek and Latin, for university-bound students. High schools offered vocational and science programs for those planning to enter the workforce upon graduation. This system was later copied by other provinces including Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.

It was quite quickly realized that this division did not work very well. Over time, high schools responded to students' needs and increasingly offered the arts courses that were essential for the workforce. At the same time, as universities began teaching science and engineering, so did the collegiate institutes. Within a decade, the distinctions between the two systems were greatly blurred, and eventually the two systems were merged in to a single secondary school system. All new Ontario schools were from then on named either high schools or secondary schools, but the collegiate institutes kept their names. Thus, in most cities, the oldest and most established high schools are still known as collegiate institutes. Most cities in Ontario have a collegiate institute near the town centre. In some cases, a more academic focus has been retained, and collegiate institutes are thus sometimes regarded as better than "standard" high schools. Many of Ontario's most prominent high schools are collegiate institutes, such as Lisgar Collegiate Institute in Ottawa (pictured) and Malvern Collegiate Institute in Toronto.

In western Canada, far fewer schools are known as collegiate institutes, most having been closed or renamed in the decades since the separate systems were abolished. In Saskatoon and Regina, however, the term collegiate is still used to mean high school; all public high schools and some Catholic high schools there are "Collegiates," including those recently built or recently opened. Outside of Saskatoon, some remain such as Lethbridge Collegiate Institute in Lethbridge, Alberta.