What is an independent school, and how is it different from a private or public school?

Three things, in law and in practice.

• Funding. The school is paid for by fees, not by the government. It may

also have an endowment, donations or a charitable trust behind it, but no public money for running costs.

• Governance. It is run by its own governors or trustees, not by a local

authority or a multi-academy trust. It chooses its own head, sets its own policies and answers to its own board.

• Registration. Every independent school in England must be registered

with the Department for Education and meet the independent school standards. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own registration and inspection arrangements.

What independence does not mean is exemption. Safeguarding law, the Equality Act and the registration standards apply. What it does mean is freedom on the things parents notice: which exams the school offers, whether it follows the national curriculum, what the day and the year look like, and who it admits.

Yes. The two words are interchangeable, and the choice between them is a matter of register rather than meaning. Independent is the formal term, the one that appears in legislation and the one the sector prefers; private is the everyday one.

The opposite of both is a state school, also called a maintained school: funded by government, free to attend, with admissions run through the local council.

Historically it means a small number of the oldest boarding schools. The Public Schools Act 1868 followed the Clarendon Commission, which inquired into nine leading schools, and the Act itself reformed the seven boarding ones: Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury. The two day schools the Commission looked at, St Paul's and Merchant Taylors', were left out of the Act.

They are all independent schools. The word "public" dates from a time when they were open to any fee-paying boy from anywhere, as opposed to a local grammar school that served one town. In American English "public school" means a state school, which is why the term causes so much confusion.

An independent primary, usually ending at eleven or thirteen, that prepares children for entry to a senior independent school. Many have a pre-prep attached for the youngest years, and some run a nursery below that. The thirteen ending is the older pattern and survives at schools that feed senior schools taking pupils at that age.

• Term dates are set by the school. Terms are typically shorter than state

school terms, with longer holidays at each end.

• Admissions are the school's own. Entry is usually by assessment,

interview or an entrance exam, at ages that vary by school, commonly four, seven, eleven, thirteen and sixteen. There is no council application, no catchment and no national offer day.

• Attendance rules are the school's own. The local authority penalty

notice system for unauthorised term-time absence covers pupils at maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units, and does not extend to independent school pupils.

• Communication tends to run through a parent portal and the school's own

calendar system rather than council-run systems. Many independent schools publish a live calendar that parents can subscribe to.

They are not required to. Most follow a broadly similar path to state schools at GCSE and A level, because that is what senior schools and universities expect, but the choice is the school's. Some offer the International Baccalaureate or other qualifications alongside or instead, and prep schools often teach subjects that sit outside the national curriculum altogether.

In England the split follows association membership. Schools belonging to one of the associations affiliated to the Independent Schools Council are inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate, which the Department for Education approves for the purpose. Schools outside those associations, which the department calls non-association independent schools, are inspected by Ofsted.

Both routes measure the school against the same thing: the independent school standards set out in the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014, eight parts covering the quality of education, pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, welfare, health and safety, the suitability of staff and proprietors, premises, the information a school must publish, complaints handling, and the quality of leadership and management.

Fees are set by each school and vary widely by age, by day or boarding, and by region, so a single national figure is not much use to anyone.

Since 1 January 2025, education and boarding supplied by private schools in the UK for a charge has been subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20 per cent. That change applies across the UK, not to England alone.

Many schools offer means-tested bursaries, and some offer scholarships that reduce fees for particular talents. The proportion of pupils receiving help varies a great deal between schools, so it is a question to ask the school directly rather than one with a sector-wide answer.

Many are, and charitable status brings obligations to demonstrate public benefit, usually through bursaries, sharing facilities and partnerships with state schools. Some independent schools are run as companies and are not charities at all. Charitable status does not change what the school is; it changes how it is regulated and taxed.

2,456 in England, at the January 2025 school census, out of 24,479 schools of every kind. That is one school in ten. The count has risen every year for a decade, from 2,311 in 2015/16, and the Department for Education recorded 41 more again in the January 2026 census.

Pupils are the more useful number, because independent schools are on average much smaller than state ones. At the January 2026 census 560,300 pupils were at independent schools in England, 6.3 per cent of the school population. So independent schools are one school in ten but teach one child in sixteen.

Across the UK, the Independent Schools Council census puts the sector at around 650,000 children, roughly 6 per cent of UK schoolchildren, with its own member schools numbering about 1,400 and accounting for the large majority of those pupils. The council counts the UK sector on a different basis from the department's register of schools in England, so the two figures are not meant to be added together.

The schools themselves range from small village nurseries and preps to large boarding schools, and most are day schools.

The school's own website is the primary source for fees, entry points and term dates, and for anything that carries a deadline it is the only source worth trusting.

Term dates are the part parents need most often and lose most easily, because independent schools set their own and they move year to year. Cyril publishes school term dates pages for 65 independent schools, each built from that school's own published calendar for the current and next academic year. If yours is there, the dates are already in one place. If it is not, Cyril can still read the calendar your school sends you and keep the dates where the rest of the family can see them.