What is "public school"

Public school \Public school\

1. In Great Britain, any of various schools maintained by the community, wholly or partly under public control, or maintained largely by endowment and not carried on chiefly for profit; specif., and commonly, any of various select and usually expensive endowed schools which give a liberal modern education or prepare pupils for the universities. Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Winchester are of this class.

2. In the United States, a free primary, grammar, or high school maintained by the local government.

n. 1 (context UK Ireland English) Certain private schools, particularly (qualifier: initially) any grammar school operated apart from the personal lands of its students or (qualifier: from the 19th century) the fee-paying secondary schools which developed from or were modelled upon them; a British boarding school 2 (label en obsolete) A college or university 3 (context North America Australia New Zealand South Africa formerly Scottish English Scottish English) A publicly funded and administered school; (context UK Ireland English) such schools in the context of other countries

1. n. a tuition free school in the United States supported by taxes and controlled by a school board

2. private independent secondary school in Great Britain supported by endowment and tuition

Public school may refer to:

• State school (public school), a tuition-free school, funded and operated by the government
• Charter school, a no-tuition United States or Canadian school that operates outside the public school system, but receives government funding
• Public school (United Kingdom), primary and/or secondary schools, which do not receive any government funding and so, despite the name, are private
• Public school (India), a group of historically elite fee-charging privately owned and managed schools in India
• Public university, in some countries, e.g. the United States, any university operated by the state, as opposed to a privately owned organization

A public school in England and Wales is an older, student selective and expensive fee-paying independent secondary school which caters primarily for children aged between 11 or 13 and 18. The term should not be misunderstood to mean they are public sector schools; they are in fact private sector. Traditionally, public schools were all-male boarding schools, although most now allow day pupils, and many have become either partially or fully co-educational. Scotland, having had a state-funded education system for roughly 300 years prior to England, uses the term in a different sense than its use in England, as a school administered by the local government to serve the children of that area.

Public schools emerged from charity schools established to educate poor scholars, the term "public" being used to indicate that access to them was not restricted on the basis of religion, occupation, or home location, and that they were subject to public management or control, in contrast to private schools which were run for the personal profit of the proprietors.

Soon after the Clarendon Commission reported in 1864, the Public Schools Act 1868 gave the following seven schools independence from direct jurisdiction or responsibility of the Crown, the established church, or the government: Charterhouse, Eton College, Harrow School, Rugby School, Shrewsbury School, Westminster School, and Winchester College. Henceforth each of these schools was to be managed by a board of governors. The following year, the headmaster of Uppingham School invited sixty to seventy of his fellow headmasters to form what became the Headmasters' Conference—later the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC). Separate preparatory schools (or "prep schools") developed from the 1830s, which "prepared" younger boys for entry to the senior schools; as a result the latter began limiting entry to boys who had reached 12 or 13 years of age.

Public schools have had a strong association with the ruling classes. Historically they educated the sons of the English upper and upper-middle classes. In particular, the sons of officers and senior administrators of the British Empire were educated in England while their parents were on overseas postings. In 2010, over half of Cabinet Ministers had been educated at public schools; by contrast, however, most prime ministers since 1964 were educated at state schools. In 2014, annual fees at Eton College were more than £33,000 for boarders, although around 20% of pupils there receive financial support through a range of bursaries and scholarships. However, fees at day schools in Greater London, such as Hampton School and University College School, were only around half that figure, whilst day fees at boarding schools across England, from Plymouth College to Dulwich College, Stamford School, Kent College and Durham School, were also considerably lower. A comprehensive compilation of the fees currently charged at each HMC school can be found on .