Public school

Public school may refer to:

Public school (United Kingdom)

In the United Kingdom, a public school is an older, exclusive and expensive fee-paying independent secondary school, located in England or Wales, which caters primarily for children aged between 13 and 18. Traditionally, public schools were all-male boarding schools, although most now allow day pupils, and many have turned either partially or fully co-educational.

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") for younger boys developed from the 1830s, which "prepared" pupils for entry to the senior schools, which began limiting entry to boys of at least 12 or 13 years of age.