You can’t blame foreigners for being a bit confused.
In more straightforward parts of the world, a public school is a school that is funded by the public where the public can send their children, generally at no cost to themselves. A private school, on the other hand, is a school which is funded privately and is only available to those who can pay.
Political guile
But no one ever claimed that education in the UK is straightforward. A report in 1868 identified the “public schools” of England as those schools which admitted pupils from beyond their immediate locality and were not run for profit.
But few of the places at these schools were free and none of the schools were funded by the public. Indeed, until the Elementary Education Act of 1870, the very idea that schools might be provided out of general taxation was viewed with suspicion.
Prime Minister Gladstone and William Forster, whom he deputed to pilot the legislation through Parliament, had to expend a good deal of political capital and deploy much political guile to establish the first state schools as we would recognise them today.
Pedantry or not?
One hundred and fifty years and many Education Acts later, the naming of schools still isn’t straightforward. In England, most state schools are now more correctly designated as “state funded” because academies or free schools are charities which are technically independent and have a contractual, rather than a statutory, relationship with the state.
Meanwhile, the traditional public schools and other fee-paying schools which many would call “private”, protest that they are not private at all, but “independent”.
Does this nominative pedantry matter? I confess to being one of those people who think it does. And I am definitely one of those people who jibes when someone calls my independent school a “private school”.
“Does this nominative pedantry matter?”
Nor is this, in fact, mere pedantry. The distinction between “private” and “independent” is increasingly contested in the discussion about the role that the independent sector plays in the education of the young people of Britain. It suits a certain point-of-view, often expressed in the media and reflected in the Labour Party’s policy on imposing VAT on independent school fees, to portray schools which are not on the state payroll as irrelevant to the public good.
What the rich get up to in the privacy of their own schools is up to them but they shouldn’t expect “tax breaks” or “subsidies” for doing it is the view expressed. From this flows the caricature of our schools being solely for a “gilded elite”, unconnected with the lives of “normal people” whose children, by definition, attend state-funded schools.
Lack of historical perspective
Unsurprisingly, such a point of view is limited by its ignorance of the sector today as well as by its lack of historical perspective. Amongst the so-called “private” schools are not only the “public” schools which were originally defined in the nineteenth century in distinction to schools run by private interests, but also scores of other former “Direct-Grant” schools like mine. Although they are now independent they were fully functioning parts of the state-funded sector until a previous Labour government removed their state funding in the 1970s.
“You might argue that education is never truly a private matter.”
And in any case, the governors of all independent schools which are charities are under an obligation to ensure that their schools provide public benefit not merely private services. Since 2005 in Scotland, the charities regulator has had the responsibility to test and certify that independent schools are providing public benefit. By definition, they are therefore not “private” schools.
More fundamentally you might argue that education is never truly a private matter. Some people may query the proportion of NHS doctors educated by independent schools, but I’ve never heard of anyone turning down life-saving surgery on the basis that the state hadn’t paid for the surgeon’s school education.
Education benefits society however it is paid for and there is a powerful argument that parents who pay for their children’s education are adding additional resource to the “educational economy” of an area, unlike the parents who game the admissions system to gain a place at a high-performing state school to which their child would not otherwise be entitled.
Flexibility and funding
Perhaps it is the very concept of independence that jars with some people. We know that the “creative industries”, like medicine, also seem to be disproportionately populated by those educated in independent schools. But that is not surprising given that independent schools have the flexibility (and, yes, funding) to continue to offer courses that are too often no longer available to children in state schools.
“No one turned down life-saving surgery because the state hadn’t paid for the surgeon’s school education.”
Those who criticise the disparity might better target parsimonious state funding, unsympathetic inspection frameworks and perverse performance measures rather than independent schools, particularly where those schools are doing their level best to address open access issues through bursaries and innovative partnership working.
And not infrequently, the independence of our schools brings about change which benefits children in schools of all kinds. I remember being clapped and cheered at a meeting of (mainly state school) English teachers in the 1990s on the basis that the independent sector’s refusal to go along with a particularly nonsensical aspect of the National Curriculum in England had resulted in a change of direction which made everyone happy.
Public virtues
So, I am going to continue to insist that my “private” school is not a private school. If asked, I will say that it is a large third sector organisation, an educational charity which is actually held to account for providing public benefit more rigorously than any other kind of charity.
“My school is a large third sector organisation.”
Our teachers contribute fully to the profession of teaching and often play leading roles in examination boards and other key education institutions. The young people we educate do not leave school ignorant of others or indifferent to their responsibilities as citizens. They might even have picked up that individual responsibility, personal agency and independence of thought are really important for the health of our society. Because those are amongst the public virtues that independent schools have been championing all these years.
This article first appeared in the new Spring 2024 edition of School Management Plus magazine.