Public schools

[JonW]

How many public schools are there in the UK, and what marks them out from other independent schools I seem to remember reading there are only a handful of actual public schools - about six? - and that they are defined by some sort of Royal Charter or similar. Can anyone confirm this, please?

[Quizmonster]

Click http://65.107.211.206/history/pubschl.html for a list of the nine public schools as defined by the Clarendon Commission in the 1860s.

[JonW]

Thanks for that - very useful - but do you know if that list is definitive? Have any schools been added to it since? I thought, for instance, Repton was classified as a public school.

[Quizmonster]

I'm not sure how helpful it will be, but if you click http://www.hmc.org.uk/ you will be taken to the website of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. That is the body which controls all major British independent schools. Once there, you can click on the 'History' heading to find out how they started - just after the Clarendon Commission reported in the 1860s, actually - and how many of them there are now. Their e-mail address is [email protected] so you could perhaps simply put your question directly to them...the horse's mouth, as it were. Good luck.

[JonW]

Cheers, thanks for your help. Will do.