can we find a more age-range-descriptive tag for "primary-schooler"?

Question

This is a followup to The [middle-schooler] tag isn't logical for the US definition. That tag was remapped to middle-childhood, which makes sense. But tag primary-school (which is remapped to from elementary) is described as for ages approximately 5-8. This is quite confusing, since elementary or primary school usually goes from about age 5 to eleven. Could we, perhaps, use early-elementary or something like that?

Answer 1

I agree it's confusing.

In the original meta to which you've linked, the proposal was to separate the "school" from the "age" tags. Unfortunately, "primary schooler" seems to be an accepted term for that age group (5-8ish) and I'm not really aware of an alternative. Middle childhood is older and preschoolers are younger, but what is in between?

If we can establish appropriate terminology that covers the age brackets and keeps the "age" and "school" tags logically separated, this would become easier to solve. I can see value in having such "school" tags logically distinct from the "age" ones, but they also need to be explainable and separate.

Answer 2

I don't think "primary school aged" is a universally-adopted term. In my region of the US, at least, people don't say primary school. That sounds like a European phrasing to me. I grew up hearing kids called "gradeschoolers", not "primary schoolers".

However, "school aged" by itself refers to the same age and is more broad.

There's also alternative structures such as this:

• Newborn
• Infant
• Toddler: Until about 3 years
• Early Childhood: 3-6
• Middle Childhood: 6-10
• Preadolescence (or Preteen): 10-13
• Adolescence (or Teen): 13-18
• Young Adult: 18-21
• Adult Child: 21+

Here is a variety of sites that show there's not consistent terminology used by people. The ranges and categories I just listed are compiled from them:

• https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/Pages/default.aspx
• http://childdevelopmentinfo.com/ages-stages/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_childhood
• https://quizlet.com/426922/typical-major-developments-in-5-periods-of-child-development-flash-cards/
• http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/growth-stages-1-infancy-and-early-childhood/
• http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1826/Child-Development-Stages-Growth.html

What's interesting to me is that of these links I've checked, none use the term "primary school", and only the first uses "gradeschool". I didn't pick and choose, either. These were just the first sites I could find, using 3 or 4 different search phrases, that actually had the classifications spelled out.

Maybe there are clinical definitions out there that break down the stages more precisely and consistently, but I'm not finding them.

So, with that, I would propose the above list. I think our tag descriptions would also clear up any confusion.

Answer 3

I wish people would stop using weird labels to describe age. Primary school means a wide variety of different ages (4 to 11 in UK, for example). It is much more useful if question-askers give an actual age.

Any age-describing tags that do not give a number should be removed.

Any time anyone uses such a phrase in a question or answer they should be politely asked to clarify.