Talk:Tag:amenity=school

Extra tags - please vote

I think it is really important we add other(optional) tags from this talk page to the actual tag page. This would encourage people to use the tags and make searching easier. For example my friend asked me for a map/list of primary schools nearby and I only recorded the names but probably saw that info when surveying! I will list the tags that are suggested and you can vote on approving them or if several disapprovals then we need more discussion below. Please do not reorder the list, so numbers still make sense!

1. min_age=* and max_age=* - this is independent of the level/type which is usually country/area specific but could also be given.
2. level=infant|junior|primary|highschool|secondary|* - school level, lists per country and usual age could be made. Often identifyable in the name such as "Sometown Primary School".
3. isced=* - semicolon separated - education level classification, see ISCED.
4. school=blind - for blind and visually impaired students
5. religion=* and denomination=* - for religious affiliation or management, operator=* may be the name of the connected body/place_of_worship
6. entry=free|location|exam|fee - the entry requirement for students
7. gender=male|female|both/mixed|segregated - if it's a boys-only school, girl's only, both together(mixed), or if it's both but they are taught separately.
8. school:type - for schools with specific purposes, e.g. schools for adults in Spain =CEPA, special education needs in the UK =SEN
9. school:studies - types of programmes offered, e.g. =ESPA;Alfabetization;Preparation for University;PF;Languages
10. website - The website of the school, usually providing more details. See website=*

Please now list the numbers you approve of, any you don't, and sign. Comments should be made in the respective section, and new proposals added to the end of the list above after appropriate discussion has happened.

approve of	disapprove of	abstain from	sign (use ~~~~)
1, 2, 5, 6, 7	4	3	LastGrape/Gregory 19:37, 25 September 2010 (BST)
2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, (10 + wikipedia; although obvious)	1	9	ALE! 23:18, 29 September 2010 (BST)
1, 8, 9, 10 (10 is of general use)	-	2,3,4,5,6,7	--Xan 18:34, 10 November 2010 (UTC))
5, 10	1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9	-	achadwick 13:36, 18 May 2011 (BST)
1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10	-	2, 4, 9	--K4r573n 14:39, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
1, 3, 5, 6, 10	2	4, 7, 8, 9	Lerks 12:58, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10	2, 6, 9	3	--Floridaeditor (talk) 22:34, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
you approve of	you disapprove of	abstain (no vote)	your name/time (use ~~~~)

How to use

Is used for "normal" schools:

• Primary Schools
• Secondary Schools
• de:Gymansium
• de:Realschule
• de:Hauptschule
• ...

How about schools like

• Dancing schools

See leisure=dancing

• Martial Arts schools ( requires tags like style=karate, style=Vovinam Viet Vo Dao, ... )
• ...

Thomas P 10:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I would call that amenity=dojo. --Lulu-Ann 13:59, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

---

And what about preschool (for children 3-5 years old)? I've added one here: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/299770815 but I'm not sure if i should add it and if yes how should I do this. Wariat 17:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

See Proposed_features/Kindergarten. --Lulu-Ann 13:56, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Age range

In the UK many schools will have their age range indicated in the school name - eg XXX Primary School, but many will not. Is adding min_age and max_age excessive? The alternative is less fine grained, say primary and secondary - but this fails to cover schools that go from 4-16 year, for example.

RichardRothwell 17:42, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I think age is good as it's not country/system-specific, yet you could tag that another way. Many schools specify the age range on their signs. - LastGrape/Gregory 19:14, 25 September 2010 (BST)

Level of education

Where it is necessary to distinguish what level of education is available in the school, I suggest a tagging system similar to admin_level=*, where a numeric value indicates the level. I suggest a table for the various values. Also, where different pedagogic programs are used, this can be stated with a type=* tag, for example, some places in Norway (and probably many other countries) steiner schools are available. This should be tagged as type=steiner. --Skippern 18:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we could use the ISCED classification? I propose isced=* tag, where * is a number from wikipedia link. --Antblant 14:09, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I strongly support the ISCED classification, as it is an international standard for classifying schools and universities. --ALE! 21:21, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

ISCED sounds good to me, but how to tag schools with several ISCED levels, or schools for disabled pupils? Lulu-Ann

What about 2-3 for lower and upper secondary or 1-3 (or even 0-3) for schools that offer all levels? --ALE! 15:48, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

That's hard to query if you want to render all grade 2 schools. Lulu/Ann

Why? --ALE! 10:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Because "2" is not in "0-3". Do I have to explain that? --Lulu-Ann 15:28, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, opening_hours=* are tagged in a similar way. So I do not know why the problem. But what about 0,1,2,3 for 0-3? Not very elegant IMHO. --ALE! 21:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Not every db would store it blindly as a string, but current toolchain is built to do so. Not every person asking things knows the current tools. Storing an interval in queryable form would probably (I haven't checked) require changes to osm2pgsql. Alv 21:28, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

In this case as there are only one digit values, so "0;1;2;3" might be OK. I hate multi value fields, but it might be the best solution here. Semicolon is the common divider for multi value fields. It is not the question how a database could store it, it is earlier in the tool chain where you only query the needed values. Lulu-Ann

In reality it is usually one digit + one character: See page 18 in [1]. However, we could also use only the digits without the characters without much loss of information.--ALE! 13:57, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of this classification, and I think some schools may cross the boundaries (there are only 6 levels). I would also like to see tagging with the names we're used to, e.g. level=infant|junior|primary|secondary|sixth_form and for other systems level= elementary |middleschool|highschool, etc. - LastGrape/Gregory 19:14, 25 September 2010 (BST)

You mean names YOU are used to? Where in your scale does Gymnasium fit? I vote for that we shall go with the international ISCED classification because it will fit with the most education systems that exist in the world. After that we could probably have something that translate a US Level 1 school to Elementary or a Swedish Level 6 school to Gymnasium inside the map view. If someone have troubles understanding the the different levels you just have to give him or her a link to Wikipedia, or copy/paste it to this page. --Christoffre 19:35, 26 October 2010 (BST)

Please note that schools are only ISCED level 1-3 from ISCED level 4 on you get post secondary education. Universities are usually ISCED level 5-6. So a Swedish level 6 school is NOT a Gymnasium but a university. --ALE! 07:58, 27 October 2010 (BST)

Strong -1 on using type=* or level=*. Has the effect of polluting the main namespace, and you can't tell what it applies to when users ignore the One feature, one OSM element rule (which they do). But +1 on using external, globally applicable standards like ISCED. I would suggest both isced:level=* and isced:fields=* as separate tags, and suggesting them for other educational facilities like amenity=college and amenity=university too, since the concepts are applicable there too. No school: prefix for these, for that reason ☺ --achadwick 14:22, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Could someone make a proposed feature out of the ISCED proposal? I have no time for this. --ALE! 13:20, 20 May 2011 (BST)

New proposal: I have now created at Proposed features/ISCED page with a summary of the proposal and issues outlined above. Please continue the discussion on that page, even if you disagree with using the ISCED tag. PeterIto 09:46, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

"Road safety" education

How to tag a place where "road safety" is teached? It's called "Verkehrsgarten" in German. See here for some pictures. --Michi 23:10, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Make a proposal - I know some of those here, too! --Lulu-Ann 13:56, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

If you search for "verkehrsübungsplatz" in OSM, you'll get lots of results, and all are tagged differently. Examples: recreation ground, college, commercial area. Does anyone know any examples outside of Germany? --Head 15:49, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I did a bit of research and found an example in England: [2]. I have not yet found a common English word for such tracks. --Head 16:20, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Also note that a "Verkehrsgarten" is not exactly the same as a "Verkehrsübungsplatz". First is mostly for children who walk, ride bicycles, or drive toy cars [3]. Second is primarily for teenagers/adults learning to safely drive a car. --Head 16:22, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I would see a Verkehrsgarten as a playground equipment among others. Lulu-Ann

"Proving ground" seems to be a good English word for a "Verkehrsübungsplatz". But the word "proving ground" not only covers driving compounds. --Head 12:07, 1 July 2011 (BST)

My proposal is amenity=children_driver_training_area for places intended for kids (pedestrian / bicycle safety training) and amenity=driver_training_area for adult motorvehicle training. See also the tagging list in June 2017 --Dieterdreist (talk) 10:36, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Schools for disabled pupils

Hi, I started to use school=blind for schools for the blind and visually impaired. See blindmap. --Lulu-Ann 13:56, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

What about schools for other types of students, e.g. special education needs (SEN), young mothers? I think we should avoid using 'school' as the tag name because it's not obvious. I'm not sure of a good name, how about 'students'? And allow semicolon separated lists, e.g. students=blind;wheelchair for a school that exists to assist both. What about standard schools that make special effort to accommodate certain needs (e.g. a special class runs in the school), students=normal;blind if normal is not offensive (I can't think of a better term). - LastGrape/Gregory 19:14, 25 September 2010 (BST)

"mainstream", maybe - backforming a noun from mainstreaming to mean regular education in ordinary classes at the level you'd expect for the country. --achadwick 14:07, 18 May 2011 (BST)

I agree with this, and I think other values should be permissible. It doesn't have to be limited to just special needs. Separate multiple values with semicolons, and make each value an underscore_separated_string (or define your own). Let's do iterative refinement for this, and use it for the general concept of "type(s) of school" or "type(s) of educational provision" (neither of which is the same thing as the level of education offered nor the sorts of classes run). --achadwick 14:07, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Public/private schools, religious affiliation

I think it may be important to distinguish between public and private schools. In the case of private schools, many are affiliated with a specific religion (around here, that would mostly be catholic schools). For the religion part, I suppose it makes the most sense to use religion=* and denomination=* usually used with amenity=place_of_worship, but that still leaves the question of how to tag whether a school is public or private? (In the US, any school with a religious affiliation would have to be private, but I suppose in some countries this restriction doesn't exist...) Vid the Kid 01:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

This can be covered with the operator=* tag, I think. --Lulu-Ann 15:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Could you elaborate on that? I can imagine a good use for naming the school district in operator=*, but that still doesn't make it obvious in the data whether it is a public or private school. And I just remembered we also have "charter schools" which I think are somewhere in between. (Passing thought: should school districts be represented by relations?) Vid the Kid 04:37, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

If the corriculum of the school is clearly religious, why not use religion=* and denomination=* on it? Here in Brazil there are several schools operated by churches, but with a "normal" secular corriculum, one example is the Americana colleges, who offer elementary, secundary schools and some form of high school in order to prepare the students for university. I would tag this with operator=Baptist as the owner of the school is the baptist church, they even give discount in school fees to students belonging to the baptist church, and in principal teaches the same corriculum as most other schools in Brazil. This is just an example, in Brazil most schools are private as the public schools often are of low standard. --Skippern 09:29, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it is widely accepted to use the religion and denomination tags. Brazil sounds like the UK, the 'faith schools' might be partially funded or run by 'the church' but have to stand up to the same regulations/curriculum as all schools. Some may have more/all teachers/staff in the religion, there may also be some aspects such as prayers or hymns in the assemblies. Not all of them are connected to a certain church (but may be to the denomination), so use operator=(full name of the church) only where applicable. The entry policy varies, supposedly some mean that parents will go to a church for two weeks to get a letter signed by the church leader. - LastGrape/Gregory 19:14, 25 September 2010 (BST)

I have been using the fee=yes for private schools. PeterIto 12:56, 4 April 2012 (BST)

I prefer school:type=independent. --Edesma (talk) 20:49, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Entry requirements

I think we should avoid using access=* as this is more for whether you can go on the grounds. How about entry=* as fee=* is a bit too specific. The values I can imagine are

• free (or state) - usually run by the state (borough/government) and open to all citizens/children.
• location - like above but you have to live within the local area (usually called the school's catchment area). We might have to ignore this one as you probably have to look at going to the school to know.
• exam - you are required to pass an entry exam or have certain grades to get in.
• fee - you have to pay tuition fees to get in.

note:entry=* could be used to give more information, but website=* should be looked at for up-to-date details. -LastGrape/Gregory 19:14, 25 September 2010 (BST)

Let's use a namespaced school:entry=* at this early stage, to avoid clashes and make sure the concept's sensible in practice before sticking a new, possibly school-specific, term in the root namespace. Otherwise, no problem with it. --achadwick 14:11, 18 May 2011 (BST)

There could be different independent entry requirements and a single value won't be enough. In Australia we have selective and non-selective schools. In this context selective means academically selective. Perhaps I think exam is too narrow a value. Aharvey (talk) 10:22, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Girls/Boys

Some schools are for boys only, some schools are for girls only and some for both. Any idea how to tag it? --Messi 16:26, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

How about gender=male/female/both ? Lulu-Ann

I think I already use this. But how about gender=male/female/mixed/segregated ? - LastGrape/Gregory 19:14, 25 September 2010 (BST)

There exist female=*, male=*, unisex=*, defined like access tags. Since education provision is not the same thing as access, can I suggest school:female=*, school:male=* etc.? For segregated instances, draw separate areas for different bits of the school or use description=* if you don't have the data. --achadwick 13:41, 18 May 2011 (BST)

I would suggest school:gender=male/female/mixed/segregated to describe the school in general - but I think we should use different areas with school:gender=male/female/mixed as well--K4r573n 13:57, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I used school:gender in an import, so now has a bit of use https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/school:gender#overview. --Aharvey (talk) 06:14, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Schools of adult persons

Hi,

In Spain there are schools for Adult persons (for 18 or older persons). In Balearic Islands this schools have name CEPA ("Centre Educatiu per a Persones Adultes" - Educative Center for Adult Persons). This centers are public (with operator=Govern de les Illes Balears). In this schools, there are several studies:

• ESPA (Educació Secundària per a Persones Adultes) specifically created for adults,
• Alfabetization - in which a teacher teaches to read and write
• Preparation for the exam for entering in the university ....
• In some of that, there are "Professional Formation", in which people learn about one office.

How can I tag it? Something like:

• amenity=school
• school:type=CEPA
• school:studies=ESPA;Alfabetization;Preparation for University;PF
• operator=Govern de les Illes Balears

Please, comment it. This schemma is sufficient for all types of center of studies? (what about academias?) Thanks a lot,--Xan 11:14, 3 August 2010 (BST)

I'm not familiar with such schools (being in the UK) but the tagging seems sensible so go with it. There are lot of colleges that do 'preparation for university' courses, but what is the college/school difference? I even saw a primary school(8-11 yrs) named as a college! - LastGrape/Gregory 19:14, 25 September 2010 (BST)

So could we add school:type and school:studies tags?--Xan 17:49, 26 September 2010 (BST)

Special kinds of school for special requirements, e.g. for adults or the blind, should probably go as values in the main school=* tag. Personal bugbear: I can't stand terms like "type" in OSM tags: just use the iterative refinement pattern. Levels and types of education should be classified using an external standard such as ISCED. --achadwick 13:48, 18 May 2011 (BST)

School addressing

Should the school address appear on the amenity=school area or on the respective building=school where the actual mail is delivered? Or both? Duplication seems bad, but address details only on a building within an area is harder to associate from a database. unsigned PinkDuck June 2011

Or possibly the address should be attached to the door where the post should be delivered, ie on the door to the main office? For some schools, particularly large private boarding schools there will be numerous addresses for 'the school'. Anywhere is almost certainly better than nowhere though. PeterIto 14:15, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

This is an old question but I came across this situation today. Should the formal address be attached to the school grounds (landuse=education) or the school building? My opinion is the building as that is where the mail is delivered. BubbleGuppies (talk) 12:46, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I would say it depends. If the school only has one (1) adresse; then on the ground, as there might be several buildings using the same adresse. If there are several adresses on the same ground, then each building. --Christoffre (talk) 13:25, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Site relation for school campus with other areas in between

Some schools have campuses that have other areas including buildings, roads, etc. in between them. Others have playing fields that are a few streets away from the rest of the school. In these cases it does not seem appropriate to draw a polygon around the school campus.

The proposed relation type=site seems a good way to convey the relationship between these buildings in cases where you cannot easily draw a polygon around the campus.

The relation could hold the amenity=school tag. There could also be a node for the main entrance that is a member of the site relation.

Example See also: question on help site

If this seems reasonable, I think the amenity=school wiki page should be edited as I was not aware that the relation type=site existed.

Gregrs 20:30, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Makes a lot of sense to me. Curious thought that the site relation itself has not yet been voted through yet - however that seems to be the situation for many tags which get stuck in limbo while people get on an use them. Getting back to your proposal and example, I notice that you have an added an address in the relation, I guess this is the main address for the school and that individual buildings may have their own addresses? PeterIto 23:37, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

For this reason I have just changed the feature "onRelations" from "no" to "yes": according to taginfo this combination is widely used. --berse (talk) 12:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

school:type

I try to distinguish the German schools Gymnasium, Realschule, ... In general I would say these Type names are not important because our goal should be to describe a school with its attributes, which means you don't have to know the local school system to use our data. Furthermore a lot of different countries have a lot of different systems with different school type names which can't be translated. But in some cases is it much easier and more precise to use the local name. So what do you think about using the school:type key for the local school type in my case "gymnasium" instead of a country specific one like school:de?--K4r573n 23:55, 3 April 2012 (BST)

See Proposed features/ISCED for a discussion about a proposed international scheme for tagging school levels; do please add a row to the conversion table for German names. If you do also want to include the type of school using the German term then it would probably be good to include a language identifier and use 'level' rather than 'type'. school:level:de=* possibly? Not sure if the de should be at the beginning or end or what? PeterIto 13:03, 4 April 2012 (BST)

Thanks for your quick reply. school:level=* was new to me - I updated my list with this tag. After my easter holidys I will also add the ISCED tags and hopefully other tags to discribe the missing education facilitys. K4r573n 01:30, 5 April 2012 (BST)

About substituting building=entrance with entrance=main

Hi, do you agree to change building=entrance with entrance=main?

From the building=entrance page:

"building=entrance conflicts with building=* because an entrance is not a building, but part of a building. entrance=* has been introduced as a replacement (see Proposed features/entrance)."

By using entrance=* we could also indicate the possibility to add entrance=yes (secondary entry), entrance=emergency...

-- Groppo 20:31, 15 May 2012 (BST)

• I support doing this. -- Joshdoe 15:26, 18 May 2012 (BST)
• I 'support it too. --berse 09:45, 19 May 2012 (BST)
• support. Entrance=service will probably also be handy for entrances only available to staff. I would like us to also consider a suitable value for other entrances which pupils and parents are able to use but which don't lead to the main reception. There is also the complexity of the distinction between the 'main' entrance for the school and for a free-standing building (such as a swimming pool or hall) which forms part of the school. Large private boarding school are a extreme example of building and entrance complexity! PeterIto 10:38, 19 May 2012 (BST)

Thanks for the replies, since there were not objections I applied the changes. I leave further ennhancements to better english speakers. Groppo 09:24, 20 May 2012 (BST)

Adding an image

Hi everyone! Some time ago i drew an image [4] that shows an example about how to use the tag amenity=school, in relation with other usually related tags. The image is now on the italian page and I'd like to add it also on the english page. Do you think that images like that can be useful? For any suggest, discuss here. --berse 11:12, 22 May 2012 (BST)

Sounds like a good idea it me and an improvement on what we have. PeterIto 11:45, 31 May 2012 (BST)

I like it too. --Groppo 22:00, 20 June 2012 (BST)

Shouldn't this page tell something about office=educational_institution

There is a stub about this tag, but it doesn't mention this article or the other way around. --Joost schouppe (talk) 09:26, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

School Parking Tags

How should school parking lots be tagged? Are they access=customers or access=private tags? I think this element should have its own section with examples on the amenity=school page, since parking is complicated and people commonly visit school buildings.

Probably depends if they are for staff (private), for students (private) or for visitors, where 'customers' is probably the best fit.--Polarbear w (talk) 10:19, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Possible tagging mistakes

There is now a new section "Possible tagging mistakes" which lists landuse=school. AFAIK landuse=school isn't a very common tag (although it is used nearly 5000 times). I wouldn't consider it a "mistake", it is uncommon tagging, and if there aren't yet, there should likely be added an amenity=school tag as well, but it isn't a real "error" or "mistake" (IMHO). --Dieterdreist (talk) 12:46, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree it does not conflict with anything, as long as the campus is tagged as amenity as well. --Polarbear w (talk) 18:09, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Description improvements

The current description ("A school") is tautological, and does not actually describe anything. I changed it to: "A place where children are taught", based on the longer existing description in the running text of the page: "a place where pupils, normally between the ages of about 5 and 18 are taught under the supervision of teachers". But my change was reverted, without explanation, by @Dieterdreist:. So I'm bringing it up for discussion, so we can come up with a better description that is more widely supported. JesseFW (talk) 17:48, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

We had a similar discussion recently on Hotel. But first, you are confusing the description with the definition. As it is not meant to be a definition, your tautology assumption fails. And as soon as the description is translated in a language different from English, the catchword in the local language is important, e.g. amenity=school ->french École. In the hotel case our compromise was to start with the main word, followed by a concise phrase. In this case, we need to differentiate from driving schools etc which are tagged differently. Your phrase however (place where children are taught) would have included kindergarteners and dancing schools, so it did not work. --Polarbear w (talk) 21:29, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I didn't think the English description was intended to be directly translated -- but if that is the purpose, using the catchword alone makes more sense. We should document this in more places, so others don't hit the same misunderstanding as I did. JesseFW (talk) 03:00, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I've made a different suggestion: "A school whose students are normally between ages 5 and 18." -- feel free to revert it if it still is worse than "A school". JesseFW (talk) 05:35, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I've taken the freedom to change the age from 5 to 6, as this is the age I know from many countries. I kept 18, but know of countries where it might be 19, not to forget people who leave the school earlier (15 is the min age for Germany for example). I was also thinking about changing "school" to "general school" or "general education school", but didn't do it in the end because I was unsure if professional (vocational) schools are tagged with amenity=school as well. --Dieterdreist (talk) 14:28, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Looks good, thank you! JesseFW (talk) 16:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Use of landuse=school

The use of the "amenity=school" tag is starting to become more and more controversial.
We have a lot of "landuse=school" tags. Users of this tag explain that

landuse - is the human use of land, and

amenities - is a property that can increase its value.

Thus, the use of the "amenity=school" tag is inappropriate,
(corection).
Therefore, the use of the "amenity = school" tag is treated by many people (in the Polish community) as inappropriate.
That's why I open this topic.

What do you think about this? --Władysław Komorek (talk) 15:49, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

To say "Users of this tag explain" is a bit funny when it was just yourself who added it to the main page. "amenity=school" is used about 1 million times and not at all controversial. About 4.9k of them are combined with a landuse tag, that's probably already the majority of the "landuse=school" tagging. School is one of the few things tagged as amenity that are undoubtedly an amenity. --Polarbear w (talk) 17:24, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Please do not remove anything until you understand the problem. Also, before you touch "revert", read the history of editing on the Polish version beforehand. You will see that the topic was added long ago and not by me.
I just sorted it out and added extra information about this tag, because it introduces confusion, and a little explanation and raised the discussion on this topic. I'm just a messanger.
As for the above entry, it is probably not the answer to the question why so many people in Europe use this tag.
Removal of the sections in the English and Polish versions does not eliminate confusion but increases it.
Therefore, I am asking you to restore deleted sections related to this tag because it is a commonly used tag. As you probably know, anyone can create a new tag, but there should be some information about why it is used and where.
Example from garden:type - "This tag (garden=*) has been used as a synonym and preferred by some people: PossibleSynonym" --Władysław Komorek (talk) 23:41, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

I do understand the problem, and I did read the history of the Polish page beforehand. Be careful with such accusations. I removed the misleading section introduced by yourself and restored the section that was there beforehand and discussed the issue correctly. Could you point to the discussion you are referring to? You are proposing that "the amenity=school tag is inappropriate", which does not make sense for a tag used 1 million times and clearly describes what it is. landuse=school is a proposal targeting in a different direction. Thus some people use it for the purpose proposed, which is fine. However it is not intended to replace amenity=school. --Polarbear w (talk) 11:29, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Could you show me the place where I pointed out that:

You are proposing that "the amenity = school" tag is inappropriate?

Where is the incorrect wording there that you had to remove this text??

=== Use of landuse=school ===
Tagging an area with "amenity=school" is the established way to tag the campus. 
''landuse'' tag is typically not needed, but:

''landuse' - is the human use of land, and
''amenities'' - is something considered to benefit a property and thereby increase its value.
There are some "landuse=school" tags in the database, please make sure they also carry the amenity tag.

I have no intention of running an editing war, whose text is better.

I just wanted to explain/write to Polish mappers and others, what the problem is.

If you think that your explanation of the problem is better, then fine with me.

But you constantly write to me, instead of discussing the merits of the above topic. :)

Greetings. --Władysław Komorek (talk) 13:56, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

You inserted the words "Thus, the use of the "amenity=school" tag is inappropriate." as the 9th line in your edit of this talk page. Thus I conclude that it is your intention to replace 'amenity' with 'landuse' in the school campus tagging. What merit would that have? If my conclusion about your intention was wrong, what would be your intention then? Where do you see a problem? --Polarbear w (talk) 20:54, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Come on. Because I made a typo on the discussion page, you change the Wiki articles without thinking about it!

That's it. I see that further conversation with you, what you did wrong is pointless.

Good night. --Władysław Komorek (talk) 22:43, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

"The use of the "amenity=school" tag is starting to become more and more controversial." - On what you are basing this claim? It sounds like yet another attempt to waste massive effort to change meaning of well established tags with marginal benefit. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:09, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

This is one of the trivial arguments,

To paraphrase: "Why do we need electric cars when we have already refined and massively used, gasoline cars."

Within a few years of using the tags from the Wiki, it turned out that many of them were controversial and forced us to use new or add prefixes.

That is why I asked this question regarding the use (in large quantities) of the "landuse=school" tag. Similarly with other tags such as "hospital", etc.

There is something else when this tag is used up to 1000 times, and there is another thing when it's over 50,000 times.

The "amenity" key does not allow the addition of an additional tag from the "amenity" group, but the "landuse" key allows. Example: a school and a kindergarten in the same area.

Mateusz, you surprise me because you know this topic from the discussion on the Polish forum, started by Zbyszek.

PS. I personally do not have an opinion on this subject. --Władysław Komorek (talk) 13:29, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't see how landuse=school would be an improvement, rather the oppposite, landuse is a property of the land, how it is used, it does not constitute a feature like a school. You should have one amenity=school for every school (may also overlap), but you can have 1 to infinite schools on an object tagged with landuse=school (and it may not overlap), it does not say how many schools there are. --Dieterdreist (talk) 11:40, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I do need the landuse=school. Very often in Italy the same land is shared between schools (different isced:level), hence I don't find other ways to map these situations. Site type relation cannot do it either and I don't consider building=school a valid substitute for amenity, since it should represent the building object and not its function. Cascafico (talk) 08:22, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

See also amenity=prep_school

Re: comment "Until there’s a suitable replacement tag that’s in use or formally approved, keep the existing tag that is in use and supported by editors"

I'm not aware of which editors support amenity=prep_school, but as stated at the Talk:Tag:amenity=prep_school page there are serious problems with "prep_school" as a value for a tutoring centre or test prep centre or cram school, because in both British and American English, the term "Prep School" means a private amenity=school intended for children who are preparing for University or secondary school (In the UK it's a primary school, in the US it's a secondary school).

Why does this tag need to be mentioned on the amenity=school page before it is approved or discussed? --Jeisenbe (talk) 05:42, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

probably because it is being used >700 times? --Polarbear w (talk) 11:05, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

leisure=schoolyard

Use leisure=schoolyard as well for the yard where the kids can go and spend time with fresh air in their spare time when at school. access=* can be added as well because not everywhere everybody is allowed on schoolyards. leisure=schoolyard exists as well and is used already sometimes. Needs clarification as well and some explanations. --Negreheb (talk) 10:50, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Would this be strictly inside the amenity=school area? From my experience if you take the amenity=school way which is the school grounds, and subtract the building=*'s then what's left is strictly equal to the schoolyard? What's the benefit of this tag? Aharvey (talk) 12:15, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

There could be other areas like parking and storage (trash etc.) which would not necessarily be part of the schoolyard. --Dieterdreist (talk) 12:32, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Basically what Dieterdreist said, yepp. A school close to me has some pretty big parking spots and there are designated areas where students are expected to hang out. These would be tagged as leisure=schoolyard --Negreheb (talk) 14:02, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

(copy of my discussion on leisure=schoolyard) Fully agree that the complete campus is perfectly mapped with amenity=school. Oxford dict defines "schoolyard" in BrE as the "school playground", while for AmE they say "the grounds of a school, especially as a place for children to play". As the "the grounds of a school" is well-defined in OSM as amenity=school, it indeed leaves the sub-area of the campus where the kids push each other (as in the OxDict AmE example "the schoolyard bully") during breaks for the "schoolyard" tag. --Polarbear w (talk) 11:32, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, in Australia we just call this the school playground (which is only very rarely an actual leisure=playground. I suppose there are some areas that are out of bounds for recess and lunch breaks. I'll comment further over at the leisure=schoolyard page. Aharvey (talk) 22:21, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

One can map the different features within the school grounds with more specific tags such as leisure=playground and leisure=pitch, etc, so I don't see a need to make a new tag like leisure=schoolyard. --Jeisenbe (talk) 05:53, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

@Jeisenbe - please see my comments over there that leisure=schoolyard is a different beast, and not a leisure=playground | pitch. --Polarbear w (talk) 09:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Several schools on one campus

Sorry if I overlooked something, but what is the best way to map school campuses that are shared between several schools? Tag the campus amenity=school with no name and add the name to the buildings instead? (Problem: That will produce an error "amenity within amenity") --Alfons234 (talk) 15:08, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

"reused buildings keep their building type"

Translated the page in french omitting this part:

building=school is used for purpose-built school buildings (reused buildings keep their building type)

Can someone explain it to me? Where does that rule comes from ? --Lejun (talk) 09:52, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

building=* tells you the type of building, but not its current function. A school building here then is a type of building. If you look at a building that used to house a school, and say “Ah yes, this is clearly an old school building.” then building=school is correct, even if there is no longer an actual school there (for example, when the school is turned into apartments, but keeps the look of a typical school). The same goes for building=church. Even when the congregation moves out, you would still call that type of building a church (if it was built as, and has the look of, a typical church). --JeroenHoek (talk) 10:09, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

See how to use building:use=*. ---- Kovposch (talk) 13:40, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

How to map "professional schools"?

What about a private school with professional courses? In Italy, there are schools that give professional courses to people who have lost their jobs. --Valeriobozz (talk) 11:03, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

amenity=training. maro21 22:34, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Or check if they are vocational amenity=college reaching isced:level:2011=5 to isced:level:2011=6. ---- Kovposch (talk) 05:56, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Unsure about training (see taginfo). I don't see a way to describe a place to follow "many generic professional courses", for example in this month this POI has a "project manager course" and "Java programmer course" and "refrigeration systems maintenance course". What do you think about school=professional_education (taginfo)? --Valeriobozz (talk) 11:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

amenity=training fits very well here. It is the tag for courses. You don't have to add training=* tag. If there are no values listed on taginfo - you create your own. school=professional_education is not a top-level tag so it can't be used alone. maro21 18:15, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

You can't use amenity=school for post-secondary education. ---- Kovposch (talk) 09:59, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Military schools

I recently created the military=school page to document usage of this tag. This wasn't to endorse the tag but just to disambiguate that usage with military academies (military=academy) which are for serving members of the military (e.g. Britannia Royal Naval College).

So, how should military schools be tagged?

I think it's very country dependent on what a military school actually means. In some cases, these are just private/fee-paying schools sponsored by the military with civilian teachers. But, in other cases, they are run as military bodies - with students actually being cadets in the military and instructors being members of the military (regular or reserve). I think in the former, amenity=school + operator=* would suffice but perhaps in the latter military=school does make sense? Could both amenity=school and military=school be used, or is this against the one feature, one element principle? Casey boy (talk) 09:07, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

This is confusing. I would think military=school is for training schools (The "academy" in military=academy signals it's for higher education; common meaning is for officers and research), or schools in bases for the associated children only. If you want to show it is a variety of amenity=school, you should sub-tag in school=military. Kovposch (talk) 13:15, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. The usage for military=school is inconsistent as far as I can tell. In some cases it's currently being used in the sense of education for children and in some cases it's being used in the sense for training service personnel. The academy tag is only used a couple of times but I thought it might be useful in tagging all military educational institutions (not just officer training) with this to avoid any confusion with the "school" value. Perhaps this needs wider discussion/a proposal. Casey boy (talk) 13:27, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Regarding for military "associated children only". Why would we need to differentiate between schools inside and outside military bases? The both serve the same general purpose. (I know this is just an usage example for this unkown new tag; I just want to oppose this particular use from the start) --Christoffre (talk) 19:52, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

University vs. school campus

Please check whether this logic campus=* may be applied to schools (and how office=school should be named and differentiated from private schools)

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Rtfm (talk) 23:21, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Continue in Talk:Key:campus#How does a school differentiate from a university campus ? --- Kovposch (talk) 04:07, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

leisure=recreation_ground

Following landuse=education, the diagram for a single school says to use leisure=recreation_ground. This is listed as a possible tagging error on {tag|leisure|pitch}} and {tag|landuse|recreation_ground}}. Should they be updated? Also, the text later says "landuse=grass is used for areas of grass, possibly covering multiple pitches..." This seems wrong either way. Should this also be updated? TrekClimbing (talk) 20:55, 11 March 2023 (UTC)