A primary school (from French école primaire^[1]) is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. It can be divided into public and private.

Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).^[2] In some countries, and especially in North America, the term elementary school is preferred. Children generally attend primary school from around the age of four or five until the age of eleven or twelve. In some places, primary schooling has historically further been divided between lower primary schools (LP schools), which were the elementary schools, and Higher primary schools (HP schools), which were established to provide a more practical instruction to poorer classes than what was provided in the secondary schools.^[3]