High school is a term used in parts of the English-speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education, but not always the highest years of basic education, which can be called a "secondary school" or "secondary college" or other terms, depending on the nation or region (see below: Usage by country). The phrase "high school" is often incorporated into the name of the related institutions.

The term (as "high school") originated in Scotland, with the world's oldest being Edinburgh's Royal High School from 1505. The Royal High School was used as a model for the first public high school in the United States, the English High School founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1821. The precise stage of schooling provided by a high school differs from country to country, and may vary within the same jurisdiction. In all of New Zealand and Malaysia along with parts of Australia, Bangladesh and Canada, high school is synonymous with secondary school, and encompasses the entire secondary stage of education.

Van Nuys ( /vænˈnaɪz/) is a district in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California.

Look at the two photos of Van Nuys' first year—and then listen to what the Los Angeles Times wrote on February 23, 1911, the day after the Van Nuys town lot auction:

"Between dawn and dusk, in the shadow of the encircling San Fernando Hills,and upon a bed that was the rough plank platform of a strident auctioneer, a city was born yesterday. Cut out of the heart of land that for long generations had been part of a single great property, stretching in every direction beyond the compass of the eye's sweep, the natal day of Van Nuys, the next town to be created out of the Van Nuys and Lankershim tract, was spectacular wonderful. Nothing like it was ever seen in California."

Classic "boomerism"—classic real estate hype—but that was Van Nuys then. After a week of Los Angeles Times ads, and special excursion trains from Los Angeles to a bare townsite, lot sales began at the new town of Van Nuys on Washington's Birthday, February 22, 1911. The area is named after Isaac Van Nuys, who was of Dutch descent and participant in a ranching enterprise called the San Fernando Homestead Association, a group that purchased most of the southern San Fernando Valley (south of present-day Roscoe Blvd) in 1869 to grow grain and run sheep. Van Nuys split this huge acreage with his senior partner, Isaac Lankershim, getting the east area (present-day Lankershim Blvd. crossed his section). Van Nuys also built the first wood frame house in the San Fernando Valley in 1872.