Private Schools and the Provision of ‘Public Benefit’

Wilde, Rachel J.; Green, Francis; Taylor‐Gooby, Peter; Wiborg, Susanne

doi:10.1017/s0047279415000719

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 13 publications

(15 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In recent years, policy has focused instead on encouraging independent schools to share more ‘public benefits’ with state schools (Cabinet Office, ). Yet such policies of persuasion, even when supplemented by charity law obligations, do not appear to be altering the practices of independent school headteachers very much (Wilde et al ., ). An access policy for post‐school education currently in force is that the university access regulator (the Office for Fair Access) has explicitly set targets for universities to increase the proportion of state‐school pupils enrolled.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Private schooling and labour market outcomes

Green

Henseke

Vignoles

2016

British Educational Res J

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Though a relative small part of the school sector, private schools have an important role in British society, and there are policy concerns about their negative effect on social mobility. Other studies show that individuals who have attended a private school go on to have higher levels of educational achievement, are more likely to secure a high-status occupation and also have higher wages. In this article we contribute new evidence on the magnitude of the wage premium, and address a puzzle found in previous studies: how to explain the direct pay premium whereby privately educated male workers have higher wages even than their similarly educated peers. It is commonly conjectured that the broader curriculum that private schools are able to deliver, coupled with the peer pressures of a partially segregated section of society, help to inculcate cultural capital, including some key 'noncognitive' attributes. We focus here on leadership, organisational participation and an acceptance of hard work. We find that privately educated workers are in jobs that require significantly greater leadership skills, offer greater organisational participation and require greater work intensity. These associations are partially mediated by educational achievement. Collectively these factors contribute little, however, to explaining the direct pay premium. Rather, a more promising account arises from the finding that inclusion of a variable for industry reduces the private school premium to an insignificant amount, which is consistent with selective sorting of privately educated workers into high-paying industries.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Private schooling and labour market outcomes

Green

Henseke

Vignoles

2016

British Educational Res J

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Yet the stated policy aim to bring about improvement in state school performance through sponsorship from (and partnership with) private schools is not expected to rest on any substantive transfer of resources from the private to the state schools. Not least, there is voiced resentment from private schools fearing a backlash from parents if many of their resources were diverted to the state sector (Paton, 2013;Wilde et al, 2016). Rather, the aspiration is that, with good management an ethos of high academic expectations can be brought to the sponsored state schools.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Variance in Pupil Attainment: How Important is the School Attended?

Wilkinson

Bryson

Stokes

2018

Natl. Inst. econ. rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We explore the variation in pupil attainment at the end of secondary schooling in England. The paper links data on all schools and all pupils within these schools to analyse the role of the school in accounting for this variation. We analyse a number of different indicators of pupil attainment including value added between the end of primary and secondary schooling and attainment levels at the end of secondary schooling. We examine indicators that were the focus of the school accounting framework as well as other indicators that were not directly part of how schools were assessed. We show that schools account for a minority of the variance in pupil attainment, and the extent of the variation accounted for by the school is sensitive to the measure of pupil attainment used. In addition, we find that the majority of the explained school-level variance in attainment is related to school composition. However, most of the variance in attainment remains unexplained, raising questions about what other factors contribute to the variation in school performance.

show abstract

“…With the cessation of the Assisted Places Scheme that ran from 1981 till 1997 (Whitty et al, 1998), Britain's private schools receive almost no direct public subsidies: their funding derives almost exclusively from fees, donations and business activities. While they are managed and governed autonomously, three-quarters are registered charities bringing an obligation to provide 'public benefit' (Wilde et al, 2016) in return for a degree of public subsidy through tax relief.…”

Section: Institutional Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determinants of private school participation: All about the money?

Anders¹,

Green²,

Henderson³

et al. 2020

British Educational Res J

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For those who grew up in Britain in the latter half of the twentieth century, there is known to be a strong association between social class or family income and attending a private school. However, increasing private school fees and promotion of school choice in the state sector have potential implications for the predictors of participation in private schooling in the twenty-first century. In this article, through analysis of rich, longitudinal data from a recent, representative birth cohort study, we provide new evidence on this issue. Given the high and rising fees required to send a child to private school, one might think that the decision is entirely connected with financial resources. However, while these remain an important factor, we argue that other determinants are also important. In particular, we highlight the importance of parental values and geographical proximity to high-quality state school alternatives: a one standard deviation increase in levels of parental traditional values is associated with a 2.5 percentage point higher probability of their child attending a private school, while each minute of additional travel time to the nearest state school judged 'Outstanding' by England's schools inspectorate is associated with a 0.2 percentage point higher probability of attending a private school. We also examine the characteristics of those who 'mix and match' state and private schooling, noting their similarity to private school attendees in terms of their values but lower levels of financial resources.

show abstract

Private Schools and the Provision of ‘Public Benefit’

Cited by 13 publications

References 13 publications

Private schooling and labour market outcomes

Private schooling and labour market outcomes

Assessing the Variance in Pupil Attainment: How Important is the School Attended?

Determinants of private school participation: All about the money?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About