Eton is quite possibly the most famous school in the world and has become a byword for educational excellence, opportunity and prestige. The all-boys, all-boarding school is located in the town of Eton, just outside of London and situated in close proximity to Windsor Castle. This august establishment has been the preferred school for Royals […]
One of the great bastions of the famed English public school system, Harrow remains one of the few all-boys, all-boarding schools alongside other great institutions including rivals Eton College, Winchester College and Radley College. Harrow has garnered an international reputation for educating the sons of gentlemen for hundreds of years and boasts an estimable list
One of England’s most-celebrated schools, Rugby School is the prototype for the English Public School model. Under the illustrious Thomas Arnold, who was headmaster of the school between 1828 and 1841, Rugby embodied the concept of muscular Christianity and came to define what an English Public School should be. With that came, also, the creation of a code of football which came to be the sport of the English Upper and Upper Middle classes – namely rugby football. Rugby, today, is an excellent fee-paying, co-educational boarding school which offers a university-preparatory education to pupils between the ages of 13 and 18. It’s associated preparatory school, Bilton Grange, completes the offer with an all-through education from the age of 3 with junior boarding as an option.
In 1861, a Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of the 4th Earl of Clarendon, was established and tasked with investigating the governance and finance of Britain’s public schools (effectively private schools) and sought to define and stipulate what constitutes a public school and how such schools are managed, specifically, with respect to their endowments and how those endowments were disbursed. Ultimately, and controversially, the Commission’s report would ring-fence a select group of elite schools (the Great Nine / Clarendon Schools) which would be subject to the provisions of the Public Schools Act 1868 and which, forever thereafter, would enjoy a higher degree of status and reputation than their peers.
