A paper examined the determinants of demand for private education in England from the ages of 7 until 15. At ages 11 and 13, an increase in the quality of local state secondary reduced the probability of attending private schools. At all other ages demand was almost entirely determined by demand in the previous year for the same cohort, and price and quality did not have a significant impact.
Source: Richard Blundell, Lorraine Dearden and Luke Sibieta, The Demand for Private Schooling in England: The impact of price and quality, Working Paper 10/21, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Date: 2010-Sep
A paper compared patterns of private school attendance in the United Kingdom and Australia. About 6.5 per cent of school children in the UK attended a private school, while 33 per cent did so in Australia. There was a strong effect of household income on private school attendance; a strong degree of intergenerational transmission in both countries; and significant effects of parental education level, political preferences, religious background, and the number of siblings on private school attendance.
Source: Lorraine Dearden, Chris Ryan and Luke Sibieta, What Determines Private School Choice? A comparison between the UK and Australia, Working Paper 10/22, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Date: 2010-Sep
A study found that richer, larger, and more prestigious private schools devoted a smaller portion of their income to bursaries than their smaller and less high-attaining counterparts.
Source: Peter Davies, John Noble, Kim Slack and Katy Vigurs, Fee Remissions and Bursaries in Independent Schools, Sutton Trust
Links: Report | Telegraph report | BBC report | Guardian report
Date: 2010-Jul
A paper examined the extent to which private/state school wage and education differentials had changed over time (by reference to 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts). Private schools had served to reproduce inequalities in society over the period examined.
Source: Francis Green, Stephen Machin, Richard Murphy and Yu Zhu, The Changing Economic Advantage from Private School, DP115, Centre for Economic Performance/London School of Economics
Links: Paper
Date: 2010-Jun
A briefing compared the nature of private schooling in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Source: Chris Ryan and Luke Sibieta, Private Schooling in the UK and Australia, Briefing Note 106, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Links: Briefing Note | Summary | ISC press release
Date: 2010-Jun
