Information about Collegiate Institute

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

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. Overtime the high schools responded to students' needs and increasingly offered the arts courses that were essential for the workforce. At the same time as the universities began teaching science and engineering and 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 named either high schools or secondary schools, but the collegiate institutes kept their names. Thus in most cities the oldest, and best established high schools remain known as collegiate institutes. Most cities in Ontario have a collegiate institute near the centre of town. In some cases the more academic focus has been retained, and collegiate institutes are thus sometimes better regarded than "standard" high schools. Many of Ontario's most prominent high schools are collegiate institutes, such as Lisgar Collegiate Institute in Ottawa and Jarvis 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 though, the term Collegiate is still used for High School. All public high schools and some catholic high schools still are "Collegiates", even the new ones being built or recently opened. Outside of Saskatoon some remain, such as Lethbridge Collegiate Institute in Lethbridge, Alberta.