How much of the population actually went to independent schools: 7% or 14%?

Written by Rudi Eliott Lockhart

Reading the media on schools, you tend to hear a lot about how the independent sector in the UK only accounts for 7% of pupils, (see for example this article from The Telegraph last month).  The figure is used as a stick to beat the independent sector with: a narrative of independent schools being only for a small minority gets generated, and when this gets added to the debate surrounding social mobility the apparent small scale of the independent sector is used to exemplify insufficient social mobility in our society.  This happened recently in Alan Milburn’s report ‘Unleashing Aspiration’.

The figure of 7% is based on the proportion of the current school population who are at independent schools, but we know that this proportion is not the same for all ages.  For example, only around 4% of the 5-year-olds currently at school are in the independent sector, while around 8% of 15-year-olds are.  The general rule of thumb is that, once children hit compulsory school age, the older they are the more likely they are to be in an independent school.  After children hit 16 and compulsory school ceases, the proportion at independent schools increases further, although the figures are harder to calculate as sixth-form colleges and further education colleges account for a number of children in education, although technically no longer part of the school system.  Further research on this came out in last month’s ISC Bulletin.

What this age profile shows is that pupils don’t necessarily remain part of the maintained sector or the independent sector for their whole school career: they move between the sectors.  Indeed, the boundary between the two sectors seems to be something of a porous one.  Moreover, over the course of their time at school, they’re more likely to join the independent sector than leave it.  So the figure of 7% only shows the proportion of pupils currently at independent schools, it doesn’t show the proportion who will attend one at some point in their school life.  ISC therefore commissioned a survey to show how much of the adult population had attended an independent school.  We found that 14% of adults in Britain had been educated in the independent sector: twice as many adults had been to independent schools than previously thought.  If applied to the adult population of Britain, it suggests that well over seven million adults experienced an independent education.  This is a sizeable number and by no means an insignificant minority!

There are two important implications from this result.  First, If pupils often move between the two sectors, then this is further reason to reject the use of school background as a proxy for socio-economic background.  For more on the perils of using school as a proxy for background see this demographic analysis of ISC pupils.  Pupils frequently don’t fit into straightforward boxes of ‘independent school’ or ‘maintained school’ through-and-through.  Second, there are implications for the social mobility debate.  When politicians and the media use the figure of 7% to highlight a lack of social mobility – as they habitually do – by suggesting an ‘over representation’ of independent school alumni in the professions, they are in fact underestimating the numbers of these alumni.  If in fact twice as many people experience independent education than previously thought then their apparent over representation in the professions is much reduced.

The survey also found that 22% of adults had had some form of paid tuition when they were a child, in addition to anything they received as part of their normal schooling.  Most of these people had not been to independent schools meaning that 29% of adults received some sort of paid-for teaching, be it school education, private maths coaching, lessons for a musical instrument or paid-for sports coaching.  This establishes the fact that for over a quarter of adults someone paid for them to receive at least some of the sorts of teaching on offer at independent schools.  It’s very clear that we should stop thinking of only a small minority opting for teaching that’s not supplied by the state, rather we should recognise that a very significant number of people choose, and pay for, bespoke independent education.

Related posts:

• A Bright Spark: ‘Gifted and Talented’ in the Independent Sector
• Independent Schools – A Well Rounded Education
• Search for school job vacancies using ISC’s new job search
• Special Educational Needs (SEN) and Independent Schools
• Public vs. Private Benefit: Possible attitudes towards independent education

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 11:13 am by Rudi Eliott Lockhart and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.