In the UK, private school attendance is often taken as a shorthand for privilege, so the Privilege and Participation survey asked a short series of questions about the kinds of schools that people have attended. Figure 1 (above, using weighted data) show the answers to these questions, starting with the last type of school that people attended (panel A).[1] A quarter (25.4%) attended a comprehensive school, a further third (33.9%) attended either a grammar (17.3%) or a secondary modern (16.6%) school, and approaching three in ten (28.4%) attended some other form of state school. This means that getting on for nine in ten people (87.7%) finished their schooling at some widespread form of state school. Only on in seventeen people (5.9%) attended a private school, which is slightly lower than the one in fourteen (7.0%) who do so in the population. That said, some people in the ‘Other type of school’ category (6.4%) could have attended a specific form of independent school (e.g., an international school) that they wished to distinguish from independent schools in general. Further, one in ten people (10.4%) attended a private primary school (panel B) even if they went onto finish their schooling at a state institution.
Amongst those who attended private school at some stage, two thirds (67.6%) had their fees paid entirely by their parents (panel C). More than a fifth (22.4%) received either a partial (14.9%) or full (7.5%) scholarship to cover their fees, leaving one in ten (10.1%) who had some other arrangement. This means that more than eight in ten (82.5%) people who attended private school at some stage had at least some of their fees paid by their parents. Figure 2 (below, also using weighted data) shows that those who attended private school at some stage constitute roughly one in eight people (12.3%). This attendance could be during their primary education, their secondary education, or both, and the group encompasses people who had short or long periods in private education. It also covers people who received private education for a range of reasons, from those who have a family tradition of attending a certain public school to those whose parents took on extra work, saved, or cut household expenditure in other areas to send them to a private school. Nevertheless, the people who attended private school, and especially those whose parents paid their fees, can be seen as the recipients of a form of unearned privilege that is not available to the vast majority of the population.
| Variable names | pr_schtyp_rmv, back_schtyp_primid |
| Number of cases | 1,383, 1,405 |
| Number of categories | 8, 2 |
| Categories to code as missing | None |
| Cases to code as missing | None |
| Recoded variable names | pr_prvsch_b |
| Number of cases | 1,386 |
| Number of categories | 2 |
| New and old categories | Any respondent who indicated that the last school they attended was private (category 7 on pr_schtype_rmv) or that they had attended a private primary school (category 1 on back_schtyp_primid) were coded as 1 (‘Yes’) on the new variable indicating any private school attendance. All other respondents were coded as zero, except those (n = 19) who did not indicate the last type of school they attended (which could have been private) and attended a state primary school. |
Privilege and Participation 