Tristram Hunt: Private schools have done too little for too long

‘Poor and indigent scholars.” Time and again that is the phrase embedded in the founding ideals of England’s great public schools.Harrow was established as a grammar school “by instinct of charity” to educate the neediest. Dulwich College was set up by the impresario Edward Alleyn for “poor scholars” from London’s toughest boroughs. But now, according to Andrew Halls, head of King’s College School Wimbledon, these centres of learning are little more than “finishing schools for the children of oligarchs”.

In the wise words of the upper tribunal, adjudicating between the ISC and the Charity Commission, “these are issues which require political resolution”. Although private schools, including the one that I went to, educate only 7% of children, their students take up almost 50% of Oxbridge places. Analysis by the Sutton Trust reveals an interesting spectrum: an independent day school student is 22 times more likely to attend a Russell Group university than a state school student from a disadvantaged background.

Read the full article here.

Read Patrick Wintour’s report for the Guardian which quotes the Sutton Trust research here.