Public school (United Kingdom)

A public school in England and Wales is a type of fee-charging private school originally for older boys. The schools are "public" from a historical schooling context in the sense of being open to pupils irrespective of locality, denomination or paternal trade or profession or family affiliation with governing or military service, and also not being run for the profit of a private owner.

Although the term "public school" has been in use since at least the 12th century, its usage was formalised by the Public Schools Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 118), which put into law most recommendations of the 1864 Clarendon Report. Nine prestigious schools were investigated by Clarendon (including two day schools, Merchant Taylors' and St Paul's) and seven subsequently reformed by the Act: Eton, Shrewsbury, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, Westminster, and Charterhouse. Team and competitive sports became an important part of the curriculum, which contributed to establishing the rules and propagating the growth of many different sports.

Though most public schools were originally founded under true charitable purposes for poor pupils, by the modern age conversely they have become elite institutions and are associated with the ruling class. Historically, public schools produced many of the military officers and administrators of the British Empire.

The term is rarely used in Scotland, where "public school" has been used since the early 18th century to refer to publicly funded schools, and was defined by the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 as including those managed by the school board of a parish, or of a burgh. There are instances of the term being used to refer to elite Scots private fee-paying schools.

There is no single or absolute definition of public school, and the use of the term has varied over time and according to context. The starting point was the contrast between a public school and private teaching (eg., provided by a hired tutor). In England and Wales schools that are called public schools are not funded from public taxation: schools that are so funded are generally termed "state schools".

Sydney Smith in an 1810 article published in The Edinburgh Review suggested the following:

By a public school, we mean an endowed place of education of old standing, to which the sons of gentlemen resort in considerable numbers, and where they continue to reside, from eight or nine, to eighteen years of age. We do not give this as a definition which would have satisfied Porphyry or Duns-Scotus, but as one sufficiently accurate for our purpose. The characteristic features of these schools are, their antiquity, the numbers, and the ages of the young people who are educated at them ....

Arthur Leach, in his History of Winchester College (1899), stated: "The only working definition of a Public School...is that it is an aristocratic or plutocratic school which is wholly or almost wholly a Boarding School, is under some form of more or less public control, and is ... non-local". Edward C. Mack in 1938 proposed the simple definition of "a non-local endowed boarding school for the upper classes".