Private schools in the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, private schools are schools that require fees for admission and enrollment. Some have financial endowments and most are governed by a board of directors consisting of school governors. Many are owned and operated by a mixture of corporations, trusts and individuals. They are independent of many of the regulations and conditions that apply to state-funded schools. For example, the schools do not have to follow the National Curriculum for England, although many such schools do.
Historically in the UK, the term private school referred to a school as private property, privately owned, in contrast to public property or a financial endowment, subject to a trust or of charitable status. Many of the older private schools catering for the 13–18 age range in England and Wales are known as public schools, seven of which were the subject of the Public Schools Act 1868. The term public school meant they were then open to pupils regardless of where they lived or their religion. Preparatory schools educate younger children up to the age of 13 to prepare them for entry to the public schools and other secondary schools. In 2023, the Independent Schools Council, a lobbying group for private school industry, claimed that their members schools contributed £16.5 billion to gross value added in Britain.
Some former grammar schools converted to a private fee-charging model following the 1965 Circular 10/65 and the subsequent cessation in 1975 of government funding support for direct grant grammar schools. There are around 2,600 independent schools in the UK, which educate around 615,000 children, approximately 7 per cent of all British school-age children. Among pupils over the age of 16, the figure is 18 per cent. In addition to charging tuition fees, they may also benefit from gifts, charitable endowments and charitable status. Some of these schools are members of the Independent Schools Council. In 2021, the average annual cost for private schooling was £15,191 for day schools and £36,000 for boarding schools. The Independent Schools Yearbook has been published annually since 1986. This was a name change of a publication that started in 1889 as The Public Schools Yearbook.
Origins
Some independent schools are particularly old, such as The King's School, Canterbury, The King's School, Rochester, St Peter's School, York, Sherborne School, Wells Cathedral School, Warwick School, King's Ely and St Albans School. These schools were founded by the church and were under its complete dominion. During the late 14th and early 15th centuries the first schools independent of the church were founded. Winchester and Oswestry were the first of their kind and such early "free grammar schools" founded by wealthy benefactors paved the way for the establishment of the modern "public school". These were typically established for male students from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds. English law has always regarded education as a charitable end in itself, irrespective of poverty.The transformation of free charitable foundations into institutions which sometimes charge fees came about readily: the foundation would only afford minimal facilities, so that further fees might be charged to lodge, clothe and otherwise maintain the scholars, to the private profit of the trustees or headmaster. Also, facilities already provided by the charitable foundation for a few students could profitably be extended to further paying pupils. Some schools still keep their foundation students in a separate house from other pupils, or distinguish them in other ways.
After a time, such fees eclipsed the original charitable income, and the original endowment would become a minor part of the school's finances. By 2022 senior boarding schools were charging fees of over £40,000 per annum. Most of the independent schools today are still registered as a charity, and bursaries are available to students on a means test basis. Christ's Hospital in Horsham is an example: a large proportion of its students are funded by its charitable foundation or by various benefactors.
Victorian expansion
The educational reforms of the 19th century were particularly important. Reformers included Thomas Arnold at Rugby, and then Samuel Butler and later Benjamin Kennedy at Shrewsbury; the first of these emphasised team spirit and "muscular Christianity" and the latter the importance of scholarship and competitive examinations. Edward Thring of Uppingham School introduced major reforms, focusing on the importance of the individual and of competition, as well as the need for a "total curriculum" with academia, music, sport and drama being central to education. Most public schools developed significantly during the 18th and 19th centuries, and came to play an important role in the development of the Victorian social elite. Under a number of forward-looking headmasters leading public schools created a curriculum based heavily on classics and physical activity for boys and young men of the upper and upper middle classes.They were schools for the gentlemanly elite of Victorian politics, armed forces and colonial government. Much of the discipline was in the hands of senior pupils ; this was not just a way to reduce staffing costs, but was also seen as vital preparation for the senior pupils' later roles in public or military service. More recently heads of public schools have been emphasising that senior pupils now play a much reduced role in maintaining discipline. To an extent, the public school system influenced the school systems of the British Empire, and recognisably public schools can be found in many Commonwealth countries.
20th and 21st centuries
Until 1975 there had been a group of 179 academically selective schools drawing on both private and state funding, the direct grant grammar schools. The Direct Grant Grammar Schools Regulations 1975 required these schools to choose between full state funding as comprehensive schools and full independence. As a result, 119 of these schools became independent.Pupil numbers at independent schools fell slightly during the mid-1970s recession. At the same time participation at all secondary schools grew dramatically, so that the share of the independent sector fell from a little under 8 per cent in 1964 to reach a low of 5.7 per cent in 1978. Both these trends were reversed during the 1980s, and the share of the independent schools reached 7.5 per cent by 1991. The changes since 1990 have been less dramatic: the share fell to 6.9 per cent by 1996 before increasing very slightly after 2000 to reach 7.2 per cent in 2012. By 2015, the figure fell back to 6.9 per cent, with the absolute number of pupils attending independent schools falling everywhere in England apart from in the South East.
England and Wales
In 2011 there were more than 2,500 private schools in the UK educating some 628,000 children, comprising over 6.5 per cent of UK children, and more than 18 per cent of pupils over the age of 16. In England the schools account for a slightly higher percentage than in the UK as a whole. According to a 2010 study by Ryan & Sibetia, "the proportion of pupils attending independent schools in England is currently 7.2 per cent ".Most of the larger private schools are either full or partial boarding schools, although many have now become predominantly day schools. By contrast there are only a few dozen state boarding schools. Boarding-school traditions give a distinctive character to British private education, even in the case of day-pupils. A high proportion of private schools, particularly the larger and older institutions, have charitable status.
;Inspections in England
The Independent Schools Council, through seven affiliated organisations, represents 1,300 schools that together educate over 80 per cent of the pupils in the UK private sector. Those schools in England which are members of the affiliated organisations of the ISC are inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate under a framework approved by the Government's Department for Education. Private schools not affiliated to the ISC in England are inspected by Ofsted. Private schools accredited to the ISC in Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland or others in England out with the inspectorial bodies listed above are inspected through the national inspectorates in each country.
Scotland
Private schools in Scotland educate about 31,000 children. Although many of the Scottish private schools are members of the ISC they are also represented by the Scottish Council of Independent Schools, recognised by the Scottish Parliament as the body representing private schools in Scotland. Unlike England, all Scottish private schools are subject to the same regime of inspections by Education Scotland as local authority schools and they have to register with the Learning Directorate. The nine largest Scottish private schools, with 1,000 or more pupils, are George Watson's College, Hutcheson's Grammar School, Robert Gordon's College, George Heriot's School, St Aloysius' College, The Glasgow Academy, Dollar Academy, the High School of Glasgow and the High School of Dundee.In Scotland, it was common for children destined for private schools to receive their primary education at a local school. This arose because of Scotland's long tradition of state-funded education, which was spearheaded by the Church of Scotland from the seventeenth century, long before such education was common in England. Private [|prep schools] only became more widespread in Scotland from the late 19th century, though they are still much less prevalent than in England. In modern times many secondary pupils in Scotland's private schools will have fed in from the school's own fee-paying primary school, therefore there is considerable competition facing pupils from state primary schools who seek to enter a private school at secondary stage, via entrance examinations.