Private schools in the United Kingdom
Some have financial endowments, most are governed by a board of governors, and are owned by a mixture of corporations, trusts and private individuals.
[10] 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.
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[clarification needed] 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.
More recently heads of public schools have been emphasising that senior pupils now play a much reduced role in maintaining discipline.
[12] 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.
Boarding-school traditions give a distinctive character to British private education, even in the case of day-pupils.
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.
The principal forms of selection are financial, in that the pupil's family must be able to pay the school fees, and academic, the latter determined via interview and examination.
[7] Scholarships and means-tested bursaries to assist the education of the less well-off are usually awarded by a process which combines academic and other criteria.
[21][22] Private schools are generally academically selective, using the competitive Common Entrance Examination at ages 11+ or 13+.
Schools often offer scholarships to attract abler pupils (which improves their average results); the standard sometimes approaches the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) intended for age 16.
[26] Francis Green and David Kynaston have written that "among affluent countries, Britain’s private‑school participation is especially exclusive to the rich", and that the "existence in Britain of a flourishing private-school sector not only limits the life chances of those who attend state schools but also damages society at large".
The scheme was terminated by the Labour government in 1997, and since then the private sector has moved to increase its own means-tested bursaries.
The former classics-based curriculum was also criticised for not providing skills in sciences or engineering, but was perhaps in response to the requirement of classics for entry to Oxbridge until the early 1960s, as well as a hangover from centuries ago when only Latin and Greek were taught at many public schools.
[28] Some parents complain that their rights and their children's are compromised by vague and one-sided contracts which allow Heads to use discretionary powers unfairly, such as in expulsion on non-disciplinary grounds.
[14][31] In 2024, the Labour government removed the exemption from value-added tax (VAT) from private school fees.
[32] A major area of debate in recent years has centred around the continuing charitable status of private schools, which means they are not charged business rates by local councils, amongst other benefits.
The Independent Schools Council was granted permission by the High Court to bring a judicial review of the Charity Commission's public benefit guidance as it affected the private education sector.
The Upper Tribunal's decision, published on 14 October 2011, concluded that in all cases there must be more than de minimis or token benefit for the poor, but that trustees of a charitable private school should decide what was appropriate in their particular circumstances.
Such 'exam access' arrangements are given for a range of disabilities and educational special needs such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD.
The authors noted "a very well-determined and monotonically positive effect defined over Social Classes I to V" whereby, for both men and women, other things being equal, academic performance at university is better the more advantaged is the student's home background".
A study commissioned by the Sutton Trust[48] and published in 2010 focused mainly on the possible use of US-style SAT tests as a way of detecting a candidate's academic potential.
[49] A countervailing finding of the Sutton Trust study was that for students of a given level of A-level attainment it is almost twice as difficult to get a first at the most selective universities than at those on the other end of the scale.
In 2013, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) published a study[50] noting, amongst other things, that a greater percentage of students who had attended a private school prior to university achieved a first or upper second class degree compared with students from state schools.
Across all English universities, state school students who scored two Bs and a C at A-level did on average eight per cent better at degree level than their privately educated counterparts.
[52] Two Bs and a C represents an entry tariff of 112, well below the average demanded by any of the UK's Russell Group universities.
