Proposal:Education tag
| Key:education | |
|---|---|
| Proposal status: | Proposed (under way) |
| Proposed by: | quincylvania |
| Tagging: | education=* |
| Applies to: |  
|
| Definition: | An educational facility. |
| Statistics: |
|
| Draft started: | 2024-08-20 |
| RFC start: | 2024-11-11 |
Proposal
education=* shall be adopted as the recommended key for tagging all education features. Following the model of the healthcare=* key, existing education tags such as amenity=school shall not be deprecated and should remain in use alongside education=* tags for the foreseeable future.
Rationale
education=* tag, with over 5,000 uses as of 2024, is an alternate method of tagging schools, universities, and other educational facilities. However, amenity=* tags are by far the standard way to tag these features (amenity=school, amenity=university, etc.). As a result, educational features in OSM share no common tags with each other that identify them categorically. This makes it overly difficult to query, filter, and render educational features. This issue is compounded when trying to account for the long tail of low-usage education tags, like amenity=sailing_school and amenity=cooking_school.
This same situation previously existed for healthcare features until OSM mappers and tools adopted the healthcare=* tag to better categorize them. healthcare=* tags typically live alongside their corresponding amenity=* tags, allowing for a years-long period of transition where existing tools remain functional while the tag is gradually adopted. This method has proven successful, with over 800,000 healthcare=* uses as of 2024.
In the long term, adopting a single education=* key will encourage more accurate and detailed mapping of education features. Mappers who are unsure about the nature of an educational facility can use a tag like education=yes instead of erroneously using amenity=school. Mappers can easily invent new values under education=* for niche feature types. In these cases, data consumers would not have to handle each case individually, since all these features would share the same key, education=*.
Tagging
- Existing education tags (mostly under amenity=*) should be left in place.
- Mappers should add an appropriate education=* tag to educational facilities.
- The training=* tag can be used to specify the discipline for training facilities.
Tag values
| Tag | Description |
|---|---|
| education=kindergarten | A  kindergarten as defined by local custom. Exact curriculum may vary regionally.
|
| education=school | A school offering primary or secondary education. It may also offer kindergarten or preschool. Attendance is compulsory in many countries. |
| education=college | A college as defined as a school offering tertiary education at the undergraduate level.
|
| education=university | A university, a school offering tertiary education at the graduate or postgraduate level. It may also provide undergraduate education.
|
| education=trade_school | A trade school, a school offering vocational training, typically as secondary or tertiary education.
|
| education=training | A facility offering training in specific skills. The type of training can be specified with the training=* tag.
|
| education=tutoring | A facility offering instruction to students outside of their regular schools, either in groups or one-on-one. This includes test prep schools and cram schools.
|
| education=yes | An unspecified facility providing education. For use only when the actual type cannot be determined. |
| education=* | Mappers are free to define their own tag values. |
Tag mappings
Comparison with past proposals
- Proposal:Education Reform (2013, abandoned) proposed tagging educational amenities as amenity=educational_facility + educational_facility=*.
- Proposal:Education 2.0 (2016, rejected) was a complex, top-down proposal for education=* plus a number of large number of new tags.
- Some reviewers opposed the 2016 proposal as too sprawling or unrefined. In comparison, I've tried to keep my proposal targeted and simple.
- Others worried about having both education=* and amenity=* tags for the same thing. However, this was before the proliferation of the healthcare=* tag provided a viable model.
- Proposal:Education Reform Alternative (2017, abandoned) proposed tagging educational amenities with education=* and education_for=*.
- This proposal was much more prescriptive than is my proposal.
- Proposal:Training (2022, rejected) proposed replacing specialty tags like amenity=sailing_school with amenity=training + training=*.
- Some reviewers raised issue with the large number of tag deprecations. In contrast, my proposal does not deprecate any tags.
- Some reviewers thought the target features were too dissimilar to all share the same primarily tag amenity=training. While my proposal encourages using education=training + training=*, mappers could use different values under education=* if they prefer.
- At least one reviewer suggested using education=* instead.
Features/Pages affected
There are a lot of education-related wiki pages in various languages that will need updating. On feature pages, existing documentation would be left alone while a note recommending concurrent tagging with education=* would be added.
External discussions
Comments
Please comment on the discussion page.