Public and private schools

[rosepetal]

Can anyone please tell me the difference between a public and private schools are? Thanks.

[calcovin]

While public schools are normally funded by the government through tax payers money etc., private schools are funded by the parents who initially pay a registration fee, then either by the term or an annual tuition for their children to be schooled . It may differ in some countries.

[Quizmonster]

A number of free grammar schools for bright boys were set up hundreds of years ago. Because they were free, they were labelled �public' schools. Over centuries, many began to take fee-paying pupils alongside the scholarship boys for which the schools had been founded. The position is, of course, reversed today, with fee-paying pupils vastly outnumbering the scholarship ones. Many also now take girls.
Here's an extract from the Encyclop�dia Britannica's article on British public schools...
"The typical great public school evolved from an institution"...ie 'a grammar school'..."founded by a single benefactor during the late European Middle Ages or Renaissance"...ie 'hundreds of years ago'... "Such charitable foundations, almost invariably for males only, had usually been intended to educate local boys from relatively humble backgrounds."...ie 'scholarship boys'..."From about the 17th century the upper classes took increasing advantage of the tuition afforded by these foundations. As pupils paying the market rate became more numerous, the schools were increasingly transformed into boarding establishments."

Click here for a list of the original nine public schools as defined by the Clarendon Commission in the 1860s.

The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference is the body to which all major British independent schools belong. All of them would consider themselves to be �Public Schools' as defined nowadays.

[Panic Button]

calcovin are you sure public schools are funded by the government? I thought that was state schools.

[saxy_jag]

In the USA, public schools are those that are government-funded. They're called state schools here in the UK.

'Public' schools here, I usually think of as places like Eton, Harrow and Winchester, but what distinguishes them from 'private' schools, I really don't know.

[rosepetal]

Thanks all, especially Quizmonster.