Public school (United Kingdom)

This article is about a number of older, fee-charging schools in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. For other fee-charging schools, see Private schools in the United Kingdom. For publicly funded schools, see State school.

A public school in England and Wales is a type of fee-charging private school[1] originally for older boys. The schools are "public" from a historical schooling context in the sense of being open to pupils irrespective of locality, denomination or paternal trade or profession or family affiliation with governing or military service, and also not being run for the profit of a private owner.

Although the term "public school" has been in use since at least the 12th century,[2] its usage was formalised by the Public Schools Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 118),[a][3] which put into law most recommendations of the 1864 Clarendon Report. Nine prestigious schools were investigated by Clarendon (including two day schools, Merchant Taylors' and St Paul's) and seven subsequently reformed by the Act: Eton, Shrewsbury, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, Westminster, and Charterhouse.[4][5] Team and competitive sports became an important part of the curriculum, which contributed to establishing the rules and propagating the growth of many different sports.[6][7]

Though most public schools were originally founded under true charitable purposes for poor pupils, by the modern age conversely they have become elite institutions and are associated with the ruling class.[8][9][10] Historically, public schools produced many of the military officers and administrators of the British Empire.[11][12]

The term is rarely used in Scotland, where "public school" has been used since the early 18th century to refer to publicly funded schools, and was defined by the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 as including those managed by the school board of a parish, or of a burgh.[13][14] There are instances of the term being used to refer to elite Scots private fee-paying schools.[15]

  1. ^ "PUBLIC SCHOOL | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary".
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Fleming was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Text of the Public Schools Act 1868". education-uk.org. Gillard D (2018) Education in the UK: a history. Archived from the original on 3 June 2024. Retrieved 22 May 2024.
  4. ^ Kynaston, David (20 January 2021). "A history of private schools and reform". www.pepf.co.uk. Private Education Policy Forum.
  5. ^ Roach, John (1991). Secondary education in England, 1870-1902 : public activity and private enterprise. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-203-40552-8. OCLC 252881458.
  6. ^ Heggie, Vanessa (1 May 2016). "Bodies, Sport and Science in the Nineteenth Century". Past & Present (231): 169–200. doi:10.1093/pastj/gtw004. ISSN 0031-2746. PMC 5906749. PMID 29706669. What sets British team and competitive sports slightly apart ... is that they were introduced primarily to solve an educational rather than strictly military need. These sports were initially aimed not at the general population but at the upper classes and social elite, or at least their male offspring; they were therefore structured around the pedagogical and disciplinary requirements of a limited range of institutions, that is, the elite public schools and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
  7. ^ "The Public Schools' Cult of Sport in Victorian Times". victorianweb.org. Retrieved 17 May 2025.
  8. ^ Social Mobility Commission. "Elitist Britain 2019: the educational pathways of Britain's leading people (summary)". www.gov.uk. GOV.UK.
  9. ^ Jamieson, Alistair (26 June 2019). "UK has 'low social mobility' and is run by private school elite — report". euronews.
  10. ^ Walford, Geoffrey (June 1986). "Ruling-class Classification and Framing". British Educational Research Journal. 12 (2): 183–195. doi:10.1080/0141192860120207. S2CID 146433863.
  11. ^ Winslow Jr., Stanley Blakeley (1 May 2010). A Boy's Empire: The British Public school as imperial training ground, 1850-1918 (Thesis). doi:10.18130/V3KF83.
  12. ^ Griggs, Clive (January 1994). "The Influence of British Public Schools on British Imperialism". British Journal of Sociology of Education. 15 (1): 129–136. doi:10.1080/0142569940150108. JSTOR 1393353.
  13. ^ "Scottish Education and School Systems". www.scotland.org. Scottish Government.
  14. ^ "Public, adj". Dictionaries of the Scots Language: SND: DSL. 29 November 2024. Retrieved 29 November 2024.
  15. ^ "Top Scots Public School Shamed OVer Bullying". The Herald. 17 April 2016. Retrieved 9 November 2021.


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