Public school (United Kingdom)

Based on Wikipedia: Public school (United Kingdom)

The Schools That Built an Empire

Here is one of the English language's great paradoxes: the most exclusive, expensive, and elite schools in Britain are called "public schools." They are not public in any sense an American or Australian would recognize. They are not funded by taxes. They are not open to all comers. A year's tuition at Eton College today costs more than the median British salary.

So why the misleading name?

The answer takes us back to a time when most education happened privately—a wealthy family would hire a tutor to educate their children at home. A "public" school, by contrast, was one that opened its doors to students from beyond the local parish, accepting boys regardless of where their fathers lived or what trade they practiced. The school was "public" in the sense of being openly accessible, not secretly reserved for one family's offspring or one guild's members.

This distinction mattered enormously in medieval and early modern England. If you were a bright boy from Yorkshire whose father was a merchant, you couldn't simply enroll at the grammar school in Devon that served the sons of local gentry. But Winchester College, founded in 1382, would take you. So would Eton, established in 1440. These schools were revolutionary precisely because they were not parochial.

The Original Nine

In 1861, the British government did something characteristically British: it formed a committee. The Clarendon Commission, named after its chairman the Earl of Clarendon, was tasked with investigating nine of England's most prominent schools. The choice of nine was somewhat arbitrary, but these schools had developed reputations as the training grounds for Britain's ruling class.

Seven were boarding schools: Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Westminster, Shrewsbury, and Charterhouse. Two were London day schools: St Paul's and Merchant Taylors'. The commission spent three years examining everything from the schools' finances to their curricula to the quality of their food.

What they found was a mess.

These ancient institutions had grown complacent. Their endowments were being mismanaged. Their teaching methods were antiquated. Some had become notorious for violence and disorder—not from the masters, but from the boys themselves. At Winchester, younger students were essentially enslaved by their seniors. At Eton, periodic riots required intervention by the local militia.

The Public Schools Act of 1868 reformed seven of the nine schools. St Paul's and Merchant Taylors' successfully argued they were "private" schools under their founding charters—an ironic twist that only deepens the linguistic confusion. The act stripped the reformed schools of their obligation to educate poor scholarship boys, which had been the original charitable purpose of most of their foundations. The schools were now free to focus exclusively on the sons of the wealthy.

What Makes a Public School?

Defining a "public school" has occupied English minds for centuries. The definitions tend toward the circular: a public school is a school that is considered a public school.

Sydney Smith, the great wit and clergyman, offered a definition in 1810 that captures the essence: "By a public school, we mean an endowed place of education of old standing, to which the sons of gentlemen resort in considerable numbers, and where they continue to reside, from eight or nine, to eighteen years of age." He cheerfully admitted this definition wouldn't satisfy medieval philosophers like Porphyry or Duns Scotus, but it was "sufficiently accurate for our purpose."

A more cutting definition came in 1938 from the historian Edward Mack: "a non-local endowed boarding school for the upper classes." This captures both the geographic reach—students came from across the country—and the social function. These were not schools for the poor, whatever their founding charters might have claimed.

Vivian Ogilvie, writing in 1957, identified five common characteristics. A public school, he suggested, is a class school serving wealthy clientele. It is expensive. It is non-local. It is predominantly a boarding school. And it is independent of both state and local government while not being privately owned for profit.

That last point matters. A public school has governors and trustees. It exists as an institution with an identity beyond any individual owner. This distinguishes it from the "private school" in the older sense—one run by a schoolmaster as a personal business, educating whoever would pay him.

Ancient Roots

Some English schools are astonishingly old. The King's School, Canterbury claims a founding date of 597 AD—that's just a few years after Augustine of Canterbury arrived to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. The King's School, Rochester dates to 604. St Peter's School in York traces its origins to 627.

These dates require some skepticism. A school that existed in the seventh century would have been unrecognizable to a Victorian schoolboy. It would have been attached to a cathedral or monastery, training boys for religious orders, teaching Latin so they could read scripture and perform liturgy. The curriculum, the methods, the purpose—all were different.

But the institutional continuity is real. Sherborne School, founded around 710 AD, was refounded by King Edward VI in 1550 during the dissolution of the monasteries. Many ancient schools underwent similar transformations during the Reformation, when monastic schools were closed and sometimes reopened under royal charters with new secular purposes.

The schools we would recognize as public schools began to emerge in the late fourteenth century. William of Wykeham, who served as both Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England, founded Winchester College in 1382. His foundation was ambitious: seventy scholars, ten fellows, a warden, a schoolmaster, and various servants. The scale was unprecedented.

Winchester established a model. It accepted boys from beyond the local area. It had powerful political patronage. It aimed to prepare students not just for the clergy but for leadership in the broader world. When Henry VI founded Eton College in 1440, he explicitly modeled it on Winchester, even recruiting its first headmaster from there.

The Triad and Its Rivals

By the Tudor period, Winchester, Eton, and Westminster had established themselves as the three great schools. Westminster, refounded by Elizabeth I in 1560, selected forty "Queen's Scholars" through competitive examination. These three schools formed what contemporaries called a "triad" of privilege.

But rivals were emerging. Daniel Defoe, writing in 1728, listed "the great schools" as Eton, Winchester, Westminster, plus Felsted, Bishop's Stortford, Canterbury, "and others." The category was expanding.

The London day schools developed their own prestige. St Paul's School, founded in 1509, and Merchant Taylors', founded in 1561, educated boys who lived at home but received instruction rivaling the boarding schools. Christ's Hospital, founded in 1552 to educate orphans and poor children, developed a reputation for academic excellence despite—or perhaps because of—its charitable mission. Its students wore (and still wear) a distinctive blue coat, earning them the nickname "Bluecoat Boys."

The real transformation came in the eighteenth century, when two obscure grammar schools achieved national fame. Harrow's rise owed much to political sponsorship from James Brydges, later Duke of Chandos, an aristocratic Whig politician who used his influence to attract the sons of his political allies. Rugby's transformation came later, but both schools benefited from something equally important: exceptional headmasters who raised academic standards and attracted ambitious families.

The Arnold Revolution

Thomas Arnold became headmaster of Rugby School in 1828. Over the next fourteen years, until his death in 1842, he transformed not just his own school but the very idea of what a public school should be.

Arnold's reforms addressed a genuine crisis. The public schools had become violent, chaotic places. Younger boys were bullied mercilessly by older ones. Masters struggled to maintain order. At some schools, student rebellions required military intervention to suppress.

Arnold's solution was elegant. He couldn't control hundreds of boys directly, but he could control a small group of senior boys, giving them responsibility for the rest. The "praepostor" or prefect system placed trusted seniors in positions of disciplinary authority. They monitored dormitories, enforced rules, and maintained order. In exchange, they received privileges and status.

This system was not entirely new—Winchester had used something similar—but Arnold refined and championed it. He also emphasized the moral and religious education of his students, seeking to produce not just scholars but Christian gentlemen. His chapel sermons became famous throughout England.

Arnold's Rugby became the model for the Victorian public school. Thomas Hughes, a Rugby old boy, immortalized the school in "Tom Brown's School Days," published in 1857. The book became a bestseller and shaped popular perceptions of public school life for generations.

The Prep School Pipeline

A curious institution developed alongside the public schools: the preparatory school, or "prep school." These were boarding schools for younger boys, typically ages seven to thirteen, designed to prepare them for entry to the senior public schools.

The first was Windlesham House School, established in the 1830s with support from Thomas Arnold himself. The logic was straightforward. If public schools were admitting boys at twelve or thirteen, someone needed to educate them before that. Wealthy families increasingly preferred to send their sons away to specialized schools rather than educate them at home with tutors.

This created a complete educational pathway for the English upper classes. A boy might leave home at seven or eight, spend five or six years at prep school, then move to his public school for another five or six years. He would be away from home, living in all-male institutions, for most of his childhood and adolescence.

The psychological effects of this system have been debated ever since. Supporters argued it built independence, resilience, and lifelong friendships. Critics noted the trauma of early separation, the institutionalized bullying, the emotional stunting. George Orwell, educated at prep school and then Eton, wrote scathingly of the experience. Others, like Winston Churchill, seem to have thrived.

The Victorian Expansion

The mid-nineteenth century saw an explosion of new public schools. The British Empire was expanding. The Indian Civil Service needed administrators. The army needed officers. The church needed clergy. Commerce needed managers. All of these required education, and the existing schools couldn't meet the demand.

Cheltenham College opened in 1841, initially focused on preparing boys for military careers. Marlborough followed in 1843. Wellington College, founded in 1852 as a memorial to the Duke of Wellington, educated the sons of deceased army officers. Epsom College, founded in 1855, served the sons of doctors.

Some new schools experimented with different models. Clifton College, founded in 1862 in Bristol, accepted both boarders and day boys. Haileybury, established the same year, inherited the buildings of the East India Company's training college and educated boys destined for careers in India.

The Headmasters' Conference was founded in 1869, originally as a defensive alliance. The Endowed Schools Act of that year threatened to redistribute the endowments of ancient grammar schools, potentially funding broader educational access. Edward Thring, headmaster of Uppingham School, invited thirty-seven fellow headmasters to meet and discuss the threat. Twelve came to the first meeting; thirty-four attended the following year. By 2021, the organization—now the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference—had 298 British and Irish member schools.

Sports and Character

The Victorian public schools did something remarkable: they codified and spread organized sports across the world.

Football at Rugby School developed its own distinctive rules, eventually becoming rugby football—named after the school. The legend that a boy named William Webb Ellis invented rugby by picking up the ball and running with it is almost certainly false, but Rugby School embraced it anyway. The Webb Ellis Cup, awarded to the winner of the Rugby World Cup, commemorates the myth.

Other schools developed other codes. The Football Association, formed in 1863, created standardized rules partly to allow old boys from different schools to play together. Association football—"soccer" to distinguish it from rugby—became the world's most popular sport.

Cricket, rowing, athletics, fives, squash—all were organized and codified through the public school system. The ethos was "muscular Christianity," the belief that physical vigor and moral character developed together. A healthy body produced a healthy soul.

This emphasis on sports served practical purposes too. Team games occupied the boys' time and energy, reducing the violence and disorder that had plagued earlier generations. They taught cooperation and leadership. They created a shared culture that bound old boys together throughout their lives.

The Old Boy Network

Public schools produced more than educated individuals. They produced networks.

A boy who attended Eton in the 1880s might, forty years later, find himself a cabinet minister sitting across the table from his former dormitory mate, now a senior civil servant. The man running the Bank of England might be his old school friend. The general commanding forces in India might be someone he'd played cricket with as a teenager.

These connections were not accidental. They were the point. Public schools educated the governing class, and the governing class sent their sons to public schools. The system was self-perpetuating.

Between 1900 and 1985, twenty-three of Britain's twenty-four prime ministers attended public schools. Eighteen of them went to just one school: Eton. The other five attended Harrow, Winchester, Westminster, or Haileybury. Only one prime minister in that period—James Callaghan, who served from 1976 to 1979—attended a state school.

The military was equally dominated. During the First World War, public school old boys made up a vastly disproportionate share of the officer corps. They also died in vastly disproportionate numbers, leading their men over the top in the trenches. The war memorials at schools like Eton list hundreds of names.

The Girls' Schools

For most of their history, public schools educated only boys. Girls from wealthy families were educated at home by governesses, or in small private establishments focused on "accomplishments"—music, drawing, French, deportment—rather than rigorous academics.

This began to change in the mid-nineteenth century. The North London Collegiate School, founded in 1850 by Frances Mary Buss, and Cheltenham Ladies' College, which came under the leadership of Dorothea Beale in 1858, pioneered serious academic education for girls. Their motto summarized the feminist challenge: "The best that has been thought and said in the world" should be available to women too.

The Girls' Schools Association, founded in 1874, provided an organizational structure parallel to the Headmasters' Conference. By 2023, 152 independent girls' secondary schools belonged to the association.

Coeducation came slowly. Most public schools remained single-sex well into the twentieth century. Some, like Bedales (founded in 1893), were coeducational from the start. Others admitted girls only in the sixth form—the final two years before university—beginning in the 1970s. Today, about 78 percent of schools in the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference are coeducational, but elite single-sex schools remain.

The Scottish Confusion

In Scotland, the term "public school" means something completely different. Since the early eighteenth century, Scots have used "public school" to refer to schools funded by public money—what the English call "state schools."

The Education (Scotland) Act 1872 formalized this usage, defining public schools as those managed by parish or burgh school boards. When a Scottish person says they attended a public school, they almost certainly mean a government-funded institution, not an elite private one.

Scotland does have elite private schools—Fettes College, Gordonstoun, Loretto—but they're more often called "independent schools" or occasionally "fee-paying schools." The linguistic confusion has caused countless misunderstandings between English and Scottish speakers.

The Religious Dimension

Most English public schools have Church of England foundations. Their chapels are Anglican, their chaplains are Anglican priests, their traditions reflect centuries of establishment Protestantism. Morning chapel was, for generations, a compulsory daily ritual.

Catholic families faced a dilemma. Send their sons to Protestant schools and risk their faith? Or forgo the networking benefits of public school education? Some Catholic public schools emerged to serve this community, including Stonyhurst, Ampleforth, and Downside.

Methodist schools like The Leys and Kingswood served Nonconformist families who wanted public school education without Anglican domination. A handful of schools, including Bedales and University College School, were explicitly non-denominational or secular from their founding.

Today, religious observance at most public schools is nominal. Compulsory chapel has largely disappeared or become optional. But the physical and institutional presence of the established church remains—the medieval chapels, the religious language of school mottos and traditions, the rhythms of the academic year shaped by Christian festivals.

Major and Minor

Not all public schools are equal, and the English obsession with hierarchy has produced endless debate about which schools are "great" or "major" and which are merely "minor."

Brewer's Dictionary defines a "minor public school" as "a somewhat demeaning term dating from the 1930s for an English public school that is not one of the ancient foundations, such as Eton, Harrow, Rugby or Winchester." The sting of that "somewhat demeaning" captures the snobbery involved.

Various attempts to identify a top tier have produced different lists. Howard Staunton in 1865 counted twelve "great schools." A book published in 1881 focused on seven. Another in 1893 listed ten. The Clarendon Commission's original nine remain perhaps the most commonly cited grouping, though even that list is disputed.

The distinctions matter to those involved. An old Etonian and an old Harrovian might both consider themselves public school men, but they would both consider themselves superior to someone educated at a newer, less prestigious institution. And that person, in turn, might look down on someone who attended a grammar school that converted to independent status in the twentieth century.

The Twentieth Century

The world wars shook the public school system without destroying it. The First World War killed so many old boys that schools struggled to fill their rolls in the 1920s. The Second World War saw many schools evacuated from cities threatened by bombing, their buildings requisitioned for military use.

New schools continued to open. Stowe, founded in 1923 in a magnificent former ducal palace, offered a somewhat more liberal approach to education. Bryanston, founded in 1928, experimented with progressive methods. Millfield, established in 1935, became known for accepting students with dyslexia and other learning differences—and for its extraordinary sports facilities.

The 1944 Education Act created the framework for universal secondary education in Britain, but it did not abolish or integrate the public schools. A committee under David Fleming examined the question of how public schools might serve national purposes, but its recommendations for greater integration were never fully implemented.

The post-war Labour government, committed to social equality, nonetheless sent many of its leaders' children to public schools. The pattern continued across parties. The institutions that had educated the ruling class continued to educate the ruling class, regardless of which party governed.

What They Taught

For centuries, the curriculum at public schools was almost exclusively classical. Latin grammar, Latin composition, Latin literature. Greek grammar, Greek composition, Greek literature. Some mathematics. Very little science. No modern languages to speak of.

The rationale was partly practical—Latin was the universal language of European scholarship and diplomacy—but it was also ideological. The classics were considered uniquely suited to training the mind. Translating Cicero taught logic, precision, and elegant expression. Reading Thucydides taught statecraft. Greek and Latin authors provided models of virtue and cautionary tales of vice.

This curriculum was increasingly criticized in the nineteenth century. A modernizing economy needed engineers, scientists, businessmen. Frederick William Sanderson, headmaster of Oundle School from 1892 to 1922, pioneered the teaching of engineering and science. Oundle became the first public school with a proper engineering workshop and a curriculum that included biochemistry and agriculture.

But change came slowly. Well into the twentieth century, a boy could complete his public school education with minimal exposure to science or modern languages. The assumption was that classics trained the mind; specific knowledge could be acquired later as needed.

The System Today

The term "public school" is used less precisely today than in earlier eras. Schools that would clearly have qualified under any historical definition—Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Westminster—still use the term. But the broader category has blurred into "independent schools," a term that encompasses everything from ancient foundations to recently established institutions.

By one count using the 1944 Fleming Committee criteria—membership in the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference or the Girls' Schools Association—there were 454 independent secondary schools in England in 2023 that might be considered "public schools." Whether all of them would accept the label is another question.

Fees have risen faster than inflation for decades. A year at Eton now costs over £50,000. This has changed the composition of the student body. Fewer sons of the professional middle class—doctors, lawyers, clergymen—can afford the fees. More places go to children of the global super-rich, including many from overseas.

The political debate continues. Should charitable status—with its tax advantages—be available to institutions that serve primarily wealthy families? Should private schools be abolished entirely, their assets transferred to the state sector? Or should they be celebrated as centers of educational excellence, free to innovate outside government control?

The schools themselves have adapted, adding bursaries for talented students from modest backgrounds, emphasizing their community service programs, highlighting diversity initiatives. But the fundamental reality remains. These are expensive schools serving wealthy families, producing graduates who disproportionately enter elite universities and elite careers.

The Peculiar Institution

The English public school is unlike anything else in the world. Other countries have elite private schools, but none with quite this combination of historical depth, social prestige, and national influence. Other countries have boarding schools, but few where boarding is so central to the educational experience and social function.

The system reflects deep features of English society: the reverence for tradition, the acceptance of class hierarchy, the belief in institutions that transcend individual lifetimes. A boy entering Eton today walks through buildings where Henry VI's scholars walked five centuries ago. The continuity is real, even if the meaning has changed.

Whether this represents a valuable inheritance or a damaging anachronism depends on your perspective. But understanding the British ruling class—its assumptions, its networks, its peculiar combination of confidence and insularity—requires understanding the schools that formed it. The story of the public schools is, in many ways, the story of who has governed Britain and how they learned to do so.