Private schools in the United Kingdom
Private schools in the United Kingdom (also called independent schools)[1] are schools that require fees for admission and enrollment. Some have financial endowments, most are governed by a board of governors, and are owned by a mixture of corporations, trusts and private 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, although many such schools do.[1]
Historically the term private school referred to a school in private ownership, in contrast to an endowed school subject to a trust or of charitable status. Many of the older independent 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 (while in the United States and most other English-speaking countries "public school" refers to a publicly funded state school). Prep (preparatory) schools (also known as "private schools") educate younger children up to the age of 13 to prepare them for entry to the public schools and other secondary schools.
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,[2] which educate around 615,000 children, some 7 per cent of all British school-age children and 18 per cent of pupils over the age of 16.[3][4] In addition to charging tuition fees, they may also benefit from gifts, charitable endowments and charitable status. Some of these schools (1,300) are members of the Independent Schools Council.[5] In 2021, the average annual cost for private schooling was £15,191 for day schools and £36,000 for boarding schools.[6]
The Independent Schools Yearbook has been published annually since 1986.[7] This was a name change of a publication that started in 1889 as The Public Schools Yearbook.[8]
Selection[edit]
Private schools, like state grammar schools, are free to select their pupils, subject to general legislation against discrimination. 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. Credit may also be given for musical, sporting or other talent. Entrance to some schools may be orientated to pupils whose parents practise a particular religion, or schools may require pupils to attend religious services.
Only a small minority of parents can afford school fees averaging (as of 2021) over £36,000 per annum for boarding pupils and £15,000 for day pupils, with additional costs for uniform, equipment and extra-curricular activities.[6] 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.[20][21]
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. Poorly-performing pupils may be required to leave, and following GCSE results can be replaced in the sixth form by a new infusion of high-performing sixth-form-only pupils, which may distort apparent results.[22] On the other hand, pupils performing poorly cannot legally be excluded from a state school solely for poor performance.[23]
Conditions[edit]
Private schools, as compared with maintained schools, generally have more individual teaching; much lower pupil-teacher ratios at around 9:1;[24] longer teaching hours (sometimes including Saturday morning teaching) and homework (known as prep); though they have shorter terms. They also have more time for organised extra-curricular activities.
As boarding schools are fully responsible for their pupils throughout term-time, pastoral care is an essential part of boarding education, and many such schools have their own distinctive ethos, including social aspirations, manners and accents, associated with their own school traditions. Many former pupils aspire to send their own children to their old schools over successive generations. Most offer sporting, musical, dramatic and art facilities, sometimes with extra charges.
Educational achievement is generally very good. Independent school pupils are four times more likely to attain an A* at GCSE than their non-selective state sector counterparts, and twice as likely to attain an A grade at A-level. A much higher proportion go to university. Some schools specialise in particular strengths, academic or other, although this is not as common as it is in the state sector.
Independent schools can set their own discipline regime, with much greater freedom to exclude children, primarily exercised in the wider interests of the school. In England and Wales there are no requirements for teaching staff to have Qualified Teacher Status or to be registered with the General Teaching Council. In Scotland a teaching qualification and registration with the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) are mandatory for all teaching positions.
Types and degree classes[edit]
In 2002 Jeremy Smith and Robin Naylor of the University of Warwick conducted a study into the determinants of degree performance at UK universities. Their study confirmed that the internationally recognized phenomenon whereby "children from more advantaged class backgrounds have higher levels of educational attainment than children from less-advantaged class backgrounds"[39] persists at university level in the United Kingdom.
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". but they also observed that a student educated at a private school was on average 6 per cent less likely to receive a first or an upper second class degree than a student from the same social class background, of the same gender, who had achieved the same A-level score at a state school. The averaged effect was described as very variable across the social class and A-level attainment of the candidates; it was "small and not strongly significant for students with high A-level scores" (i.e. for students at the more selective universities) and "statistically significant mostly for students from lower occupationally-ranked social-class backgrounds". Additionally, the study could not take into account the effect of a slightly different and more traditional subject mix studied by private students at university on university achievement. Despite these caveats, the paper attracted much press attention. The same study found wide variations between different independent schools, suggesting that students from a few of them were in fact significantly more likely to obtain the better degrees than state students of the same gender and class background having the same A-level score.[40]
In 2011, a subsequent study led by Richard Partington at Cambridge University[41] showed that A-level performance is "overwhelmingly" the best predictor for exam performance in the earlier years ("Part I") of the undergraduate degree at Cambridge. Partington's summary specified that "questions of school background and gender" ... "make only a marginal difference and the pattern – particularly in relation to school background – is in any case inconsistent."
A study commissioned by the Sutton Trust[42] 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. Its findings confirmed those of the Smith & Naylor study in that it found that privately educated pupils who, despite their educational advantages, have only secured a poor A-level score, and who therefore attend less selective universities, do less well than state educated degree candidates with the same low A-level attainment. In addition, as discussed in the 2010 Buckingham report "HMC Schools: a quantitative analysis", because students from state schools tended to be admitted on lower A-level entry grades, relative to entry grades it could be claimed that these students had improved more.[43] 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. Private sector schools regularly dominate the top of the A-level league tables, and their students are more likely to apply to the most selective universities; as a result private sector students are particularly well represented at these institutions, and therefore only the very ablest of them are likely to secure the best degrees.
In 2013 the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) published a study[44] 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. Out of a starting cohort of 24,360 candidates having attended a private school and 184,580 having attended a state school, 64.9 per cent of the former attained a first or upper second class degree, compared to 52.7 per cent of the latter. No statistical comparisons of the two groups (State vs Private) were reported, with or without controls for student characteristics such as entry qualifications, so no inferences can be drawn on the relative performance of the two groups. The stand-out finding of the study was that private school students achieved better in obtaining graduate jobs and study, even when student characteristics were allowed for (sex, ethnicity, school type, entry qualifications, area of study).
In 2015, the UK press widely reported the outcome of research suggesting that school-leavers from state schools that attained similar A level grades go on to achieve higher undergraduate degree classes than their private school counterparts. The quoted figures, based on the degree results of all students who graduated in 2013/14, suggested that 82 per cent of state school pupils got firsts or upper seconds compared with 73 per cent of those from private schools. Later, HEFCE admitted that it had made a transposition error, and that in fact, 73 per cent of state school graduates gained a first or upper second class degree compared with 82 per cent of private school graduates.[45] This admission attracted far less publicity than the original erroneous assertion.
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.[46] 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.