A school is where children are taught.

True, the meaning is fuzzy at the edges.    Just as some colleges are for kids, so some schools are for adults.

A school can also be a place for teaching a specific subject, as with a music school or ballet school.    Parts of universities are called schools, as with the London School of Economics, or SOAS.    But most people associate schools with kids.

So the name "school" is not a common choice amongst distance learning providers, at least in the UK.    A few single-subject organisations choose it, particularly those who wish to emphasise their academic credentials.    And some retain it from the days when distance learning providers were called correspondence schools.

School may be the commonest name for an educational establishment, but it is by no means the only one.    Academy, conservatory, lyceum, college, gymnasium, and institute all have their champions, not to mention specialist names like seminary, borstal, reformatory, kindergarten, and university.

Each has its own resonances, which can add or subtract for the overall impression one hopes to generate.

And the private sector uses other words as well: company, division, group, office, bureau, and so on.

The Greek word from which school is derived, schole, meant leisure.    Nowadays, for children and teachers alike, school means almost exactly the opposite.    It is another example of how words can change so much that they take on opposite connotations.    Indeed, the verb in particular, "to school", has overtones of discipline and strictness which are the antipathy of leisure for most of us.    How our view of education has changed across the ages!