Private schools have trebled their fees in real terms since 1980 but their social mix has hardly changed because bursaries help the middle classes.
The average boarding fee has risen from £10,000 a year at today’s prices to more than £30,000.
The cost of educating even one child eats up half the income of a family on average salaries, up from a fifth in 1980. Yet schools spend far more on bursaries and scholarships, meaning that the proportion of children from different backgrounds is little changed.
While critics have welcomed the greater subsidies for the children of professionals, they say more should be spent on waiving fees for poor families. Analysis by the Institute of Education at University College London found that the cost of fees as a proportion of income had increased substantially. Families in the richest 5 per cent of the population must spend a fifth of their income educating one child privately, up from a tenth in 1980.
It also found that subsidised bursaries had offset fee rises for professional families, stopping independent schools from being the preserve of the wealthy.
Robert Halfon, Tory chairman of the education select committee, said last month that independent schools should do more to bring in “society’s most disadvantaged pupils”. He suggested a levy enabling children from the poorest families to study free at private schools, rather than bursaries topping up the comparatively well off.
The report said that “inexorable” rises in costs had little impact on the number choosing the sector, although “despite real income increases, these fee hikes translated into significant falls in affordability relative to income”.
Schools and extended families are helping to make up the difference, most often through gifts from grandparents. “Fee-charging schools have not become more the preserve of the super-wealthy. Instead, it seems that this has been offset by the sector’s attempts to broaden its social mix via, for example, the wider use of subsidised bursaries.”
The report assessed whether people paying for private education came increasingly from higher-income families in the 20 years since 1994 but found little change. It added: “There was no change in the proportion of private school parents who belonged to the managerial and professional classes — eight out of every ten families.”
The researchers concluded that their findings offered “little support either for the idea that fee subsidies were broadening the social mix of private education, or that charging increases were making it more exclusive”.
They added: “Schools often use the unfortunate metaphor of an ‘arms race’ to describe the process whereby competition to provide the latest, greatest, facilities and the lowest class sizes has driven up costs and hence fees. But the race has been underpinned by the rising incomes of parents. The market has been able to bear the increases.”
The data came from annual censuses by the Independent Schools Council. Its chairman, Barnaby Lenon, said: “The proportion of pupils receiving fee assistance has rocketed, as has the amount spent on this.” Many schools had taken money from scholarships, available to all, and channelled it to bursaries. Some larger schools aim for “means-blind” admissions.