The rich still dominate private schools – but here’s why it’s not their fault

It’s long been sold as a dream: a leg-up via a private school scholarship to a better life for a child from a poor background. But new research suggests that this is just a dream: a report from University College London published on Monday suggests that nearly a third of bursaries and scholarships to private schools are in fact going to high-income families.

The report, published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, broke down families receiving financial support for their children to attend independent schools into ten income brackets. It found that 17 per cent of all bursaries and scholarships went to the lowest earning three tenths, followed by 18 per cent to those in the middle three tenths, with 35 per cent going to the next richest three tenths. Then, the top tenth of earners were in receipt of 30 per cent of private school bursaries and scholarships. The report’s authors have argued that “current provisions do not make a substantive impact on the social exclusivity of private schools”.

Over the past few decades, many private schools have been trying to develop a “needs-blind” admissions policy, whereby a child is admitted based on aptitude, not their parents’ income. It is expensive, because it can often require funding covering 100 per cent of fees and uniforms on top of that, and is generally funded through endowment funds from wealthy former pupils. That funding then goes to the pupil in the form of a means-tested bursary, not a scholarship, and it is unhelpful that the study has combined the two forms of assistance. Schools are increasingly interested in bursaries, rather than scholarships, with the former focusing on means-testing rather than additional academic tests.

The rationale behind even bothering with “needs-blind” policies is that private schools do have better facilities than the state sector, that there are far more extra-curricular opportunities available, particularly when it comes to sports, and that going to private school does, like it or not, give pupils access to a different social network which can benefit them in life. The benefit for the non-bursary pupils is that they are not educated in a totally unrepresentative bubble and that their own social network widens.

I recently spoke at a school in south London, which offers bursaries to a large proportion of its pupils, and I could see the difference that a wider social mix made to everyone’s demeanour. And, of course, the approach gives private schools a slightly better claim to be genuinely charitable institutions, rather than businesses operating with flashy buildings for an elite in society.

That claim was always tenuous, even before Labour whacked VAT on school fees and made clear that it didn’t see private schools as contributing much to the public good. When I interviewed Sir Keir Starmer as leader of the opposition, he did concede that some private schools did act with “purpose” – a word that at the time he was very enamoured with – but that most of them could be doing a lot more. Now, they have the triple whammy of VAT on fees, national insurance increases and the removal of business rates relief to squeeze their finances.

Shortly before that VAT hike, private schools started cutting the number of means-tested bursaries available to their pupils, with figures from the Independent Schools Council showing that in January 2025, 4.2 per cent fewer pupils were receiving means-tested bursaries from the previous year, and 10.8 per cent fewer than a decade ago.

Labour – and many others – will retort that squeezed private schools and fewer bursaries don’t matter a fig when the focus should always be on making state schools so good that no one feels the need for this leg up into the private sector.

Well, yes, though the fact that people who do have the money still choose to get it for their kids does underline that the state sector hasn’t quite got there yet. Why should only rich folks have that choice when poor children deserve all the opportunities, too?

Either way, the rising pressures on private schools are going to make it even harder for them to act with the “purpose” that Starmer suggested they needed to show more of. This plays perfectly into the hands of their critics, who can now argue that they are increasingly for a wealthy elite, abandoning their origins as charitable institutions dedicated to the betterment of all children. While “needs-blind” was the vogue in private schooling a few years ago, it really is once again looking like a bit of a pipe dream.

المصدر: iNews