What percentage of British children, nationwide, are enrolled in public schools vs. state schools?
What is an example of a tuition rate for an average public school? Do the parents pay 100% of the cost, or are there government subsidies?
Does the law require public schools to accomodate special needs children (such as developmentally disabled children or autistic children), or are they generally placed in state schools?
Hugely complicated question I’m afraid - even your title is confusing, as public and private schools are both private.
This site states that around 10% of children attend private/public schools:
Tuition rates also vary dramatically, particularly if the school is a day school or boarding.
For example, I went to a good private day school, not the poshest or biggest but not the cheapest either, and it costs approximately £8000 per year plus all extras - books, uniform, foreign trips, school meals etc.
One of the top boarding schools, such as Eton, would cost in the region of £25,000 per year plus extras.
At most private schools, the parents bear the entire cost. However, most schools run a scholarship scheme to accept exceptional pupils. This will be funded by the school, rather than the Government.
As far as I know, tha law does not require private schools to take children of any particular special needs. Being private, they more or less take pupils on their own terms. Many require an entrance exam to maintain certain academic levels. Some private schools may have their own policies on accepting special needs pupils, and certainly some private schools are specifically special needs.
Well, when I say “private,” I mean “private” in the British sense, not the American sense. Ditto for “public.”
That figure of 10% is inflated by the large numbers of overseas pupils in the private sector.
Nope, no government subsidies - although private schools do get to operate under charitable status, exempting them from a lot of taxes.
The only laws governing intake are general discrimination ones - a school couldn’t refuse children on the grounds of race, for example. Although obviously there’s a specific exception for single-sex schools.
What about religious ones - could a Muslim school refuse a Catholic, or vice versa?
Good point, jjimm. Don’t know the answer, although I suspect preferential treatment purely on religious background is permissible at a private religious school in the same way as in a state CofE/Catholic/whatever school.
Confusingly, while ‘public school’ does indeed invert its meaning when crossing from the US to the UK, ‘private school’ has an identical meaning in both countries (although the phrase would rarely be used, ‘independent school’ being preferred). UK ‘Public Schools’ are a sub-grouping of the larger grouping of private or independent schools. There’s no hard and fast definition of which schools are public and which schools are just independent schools; the only attempt I’ve heard stated that ‘public schools’ were those schools which were members of the Headmasters and Headmistress’ Conference, but that organization includes some former grammar schools which would not have traditionally been thought of as public schools.
Interesting, QuizCustodet - never knew there was a distinction, but there certainly was in the past even if it’s blurred now: Public school - Wikipedia
I went to a Grant-maintained girls’ Grammar school in Northern Ireland.It is given a load of money by the government (the grant), but parents also pay a small fee (about 100 pounds a term).
It’s selective, in that acceptance criteria were based on 11 plus performance, distance from school, and whether one’s sisters, or another close relative had attended, but no more so than any other grammar school in the province.
There was a boarding department, which charged fees, and for some reason was mostly inhabited by Hong-Kong Chinese girls whose parents wanted a cut-price British single-sex education. their brothers all went to Methodist college, a co-ed grammar down the road, which had a boarding department too.
Northern Ireland is sort of a unique situation within in the UK though.
OK, so what do you call a British school that is open to all children and is free (paid for out of general tax revenues)?
State schools. (Offically ‘maintained schools’ but you’ll puzzle most people with that term.)
Independent schools often have scholarships or bursaries available to deserving pupils. There was also the Assisted Places Scheme.
Gawd bless Thatcher. :dubious:
10% seems quite low to me. The figure generally quoted here in NSW is that about a third of children are in private, rather than state, schools.
10% seemed surprisingly high to me, hence my earlier post. State education is very much the norm here.
For what it’s worth, the reason why fee-paying schools such as Eton or Harrow are called “public schools” is that when they were founded in the Middle Ages, education was generally only available to the sons of the nobility. The new schools were open to children of *all *members of the public, provided that their parents could pay the fees. Hence they were “public”.
I agree, Alive, that’s why it only tends to be the older ‘private’ schools that use the term ‘public’. An antiquated term. Someone told me that my school classed as ‘public’ because (a) my Headmistress belonged to the right association (mentioned above) and (b) my school was founded as a ‘public’ school for girls from the middle classes who would otherwise have been ‘privately’ tutored at home. Interestingly, it was founded by an enterprising group of Birmingham industrialists who thought girls were getting an awful education at home - included were the Cadbury family, who still chair the board of Governors. I had 2 Cadbury girls in my class (and the odd free bar of chocolate).