Why England's most exclusive private schools are called public schools
In England and Wales a public school charges fees and receives no tax money, while the schools the state pays for are called state schools. The odd label comes from history: these schools were open to boys from anywhere, whatever their father's trade, and were not run for an owner's profit.
They grew from medieval grammar schools that taught Latin to boys usually bound for the clergy, and some foundations are remarkably old, with The King's School in Canterbury dated to around 597. A new kind of school arrived when William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, founded Winchester College in 1382, followed by Henry VI's Eton in 1440. These had far bigger endowments than local grammar schools, powerful patrons and pupils drawn from beyond the neighbourhood. Elizabeth I refounded Westminster in 1560 with forty Queen's Scholars, completing a privileged trio.
Many were set up as charities for poor pupils, yet over time they became elite institutions linked to the ruling class and supplied many of the British Empire's officers and administrators. Harrow and Rugby rose from local grammar schools to national fame by the end of the 18th century, helped by aristocratic sponsorship and strong headmasters. Thomas Arnold, head of Rugby from 1828, introduced the prefect system, handing senior boys disciplinary power at schools notorious for rowdiness, and he backed the first separate preparatory school, Windlesham House, from which pupils moved up at 12 or 13.
Parliament stepped in after the Clarendon Commission of 1861 to 1864 examined nine leading schools. The Public Schools Act 1868 gave seven boarding schools, among them Eton, Harrow and Shrewsbury, independent governing boards, freed them from Crown, church and government control, and released them from founding duties to teach scholarship boys for little or nothing. The two London day schools examined, St Paul's and Merchant Taylors', successfully argued they were private and escaped the act. Team games became central to the curriculum, which helped write the rules of many modern sports.
Definitions have always been slippery. In Scotland the phrase has meant publicly funded schools since the early 18th century. By 2023, 302 independent secondary schools belonged to the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, 78% of them co-educational.
Source: Public school (United Kingdom)
