Балабақшадан 12-ші сыныпқа дейінгі білім беру жүйесі

Kindergarten to 12th grade

K–12, from kindergarten to 12th grade, is an English language expression that indicates the range of years of publicly supported primary and secondary education found in the United States and Canada, which is similar to publicly supported school grades before tertiary education in several other countries, such as Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, China, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Iran, the Philippines, South Korea, and Turkey. K–12 refers to the American system which affords authority to local intersectional "districts" which may be specific to a municipality, county, or several regions, depending on population and proximity.

U. S. public education was conceived of in the late 18th century. In 1790, Pennsylvania became the first state to require some form of free education for everyone regardless of whether they could afford it. New York passed similar legislation in 1805. In 1820, Massachusetts became the first state to create a tuition free high school, Boston English. The first K–12 public school systems appeared in the early 19th century. In the 1830s and 1840s, Ohioans were taking a significant interest in the idea of public education. At that point in time, schools were commonly operated independently of each other, with little attempt at uniformity. The Akron School Law of 1847 changed this. The city of Akron unified the operations, curriculum and funding of local schools into a single public school district:

In 1849, the state of Ohio enacted a law modeled after the Akron law which extended the idea of school districts to cover the rest of the state. By 1930, all 48 states had passed laws making education compulsory, and in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which committed the federal government to significant ongoing expenditures to each state for the purpose of sustaining local K–12 school systems. The ESEA essentially made K–12 education the law of the land.

The term is often used as a kind of shorthand to collectively refer to the entirety of primary and secondary education, as it is much easier than having to say one is referring in the aggregate to elementary, middle, and high school education. However, it is rare for a school district to actually teach all K–12 grades at one unified school campus. Even the smallest school districts try to maintain, at a minimum, a two tier distinction between an elementary school (K–8) and a high school (9–12). Unified K–12 schools are common, however, in rural and remote areas throughout Canada. The term is often used in school website URLs, generally appearing before the country code top level domain (or in the United States, the state top level domain). The terms "PK–12", "PreK–12", or "Pre K–12" are sometimes used to add pre kindergarten. It is also used by American multinationals selling into the educational sector, such as Dell where UK customers are presented with this as a market segment choice.

In Australia, P–12 is sometimes used in place of K–12, particularly in Queensland, where it is used as an official term in the curriculum framework. P–12 schools serve children for the thirteen years from prep until Year 12, without including the separate kindergarten component. In Canada (Nova Scotia) P–12 is used commonly in place of K–12 and serves students from grade Primary through 12.