Eton, Harrow, Winchester and their ilk have never been cool, exactly — the tailcoats and Latin put paid to that. But it’s possible that their stock has never been lower than at this precise moment in time. From Yorkshire to Barnes, the public school is beset by scandal. Prestigious prep schools, like Boris Johnson’s alma mater Ashdown House, are being forced to close. Institutions whose alumni once went out to run the empire are forced to go abroad, cap in hand, hoping to lure the children of foreign plutocrats. A public school accent is no longer something to be bellowed across a crowded pub (probably the White Horse in Parsons Green) — but a source of shame whispered 

“The only thing public school kids have going for them now is that at least they all know that it’s not OK to have gone to a public school,” says one teacher at a top public school. “There’s a bit of self-awareness, which wasn’t the case until about ten years ago. But because they’re aware of the social opprobrium, they are all determined to be actively woke in a constructive way. Five years ago they were all desperate to show you how into grime they were. Luckily that’s stopped. But they’re volunteering, they’re keen on the environment and sustainability. They’re making an effort to be slightly better people than they could have got away with before. They have to be aware of their privilege, and they can’t take themselves too seriously.

&#8220;Eton has never exactly been cool&#8230;&#8221;


“A lot of it’s down to social media, which has become less of an echo chamber,” he adds. “It’s not just them and their chinny mates any more. No posh people are being championed at the moment. Look at Rishi with his tweet saying ‘look how far I’ve come from Winchester, Oxford and Stanford’. That’s obviously unacceptable. Kids see the social reaction to stuff like that, and realise they can’t flaunt it.”

Many of the schools themselves are lurching from crisis to crisis. There are few sadder or grimmer cases than Ampleforth. The country’s leading Catholic college was once a bastion that produced Lawrence Dallaglio, Antony Gormley, Rupert Everett and David Stirling, the founder of the SAS. Now it is circling the plughole following a catastrophic few years that began in 2016, when

 published a report accusing the school of covering up sexual abuse claims. Two years later, an independent enquiry found that a culture of “appalling sexual abuse” had flourished for decades. Last year, Peter Turner, a former monk, was jailed for more than 20 years for offences committed between 1984 and 1990. The judge said: “You have brought evil into this world when, by your calling, you should have brought hope, help and succour.” Not what you want for your fees.

In attempting to root out the problem and reform its practices, the school went through five heads in five years between 2014 and 2019. A fence has also been put to separate the school from the monastery next door. Then, last November Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, banned the school from taking new pupils, saying progress was too slow. The incumbent head, Robin Dyer, told 

that, unless it is able to admit new pupils, the school — which unlike most other public schools has few assets and relies on fees —may be forced to close entirely.

The judge said: “You have brought evil into this world when you should have brought hope..."

“A lot of public schools prepare pupils to be captains of industry and make money,” says one former pupil. “[At Ampleforth] there was an emphasis on being a good man, with a sound moral compass. The monks didn’t have other families: they were dedicated to school, God and their work. It’s very sad that they completely broke their covenant. There’s an element of reaping what you sow.”

While Ampleforth’s problems are unusually severe, it’s far from alone. A 

 report in 2014 found that teachers from 130 schools had been implicated in sexual abuse allegations. George Osborne’s alma mater St Paul’s has been through the ringer, too. According to the BBC, It has paid out more than half a million pounds in compensation to old pupils who were victims of sexual abuse at St Paul’s and Colet Court, its feeder prep school, over decades. Reports detailed how staff made pupils get drunk, share beds with them and perform sex acts.

“We accept full responsibility for the past abuse experienced by pupils at the school and have previously apologised to survivors and our wider school community,” the school said in a statement. “Our modern safeguarding regime is of a very high standard and we are determined to ensure, through continuous improvement of practice, that we never forget the lessons of our past.” At £38,905 per year for a boarding place, you’d certainly hope so.

Ampleforth College has gone through five heads in five years


A different kind of alumnus has kept the West London institution in the news recently. Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri, was the first senator to say he would object to the 2020 election results. Later, as the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol building in Jamiroquai-style headgear, Hawley raised his fist in solidarity. It didn’t take long before keen-eyed viewers remembered Mr Hawley, who had taught at St Paul’s for a year in 2002. Even then, he didn’t hide his right-wing, Christian leanings. “He made himself popcorn to watch the news about the Iraq invasion,” one contemporary told 

“He ran my Oxbridge preparation classes,” added another. “He’s useless, I didn’t get in.”

Three words that have long struck terror into the heart of independent school staff, pupils and, above all, parents — and they conjure much more horror than a few right-wing political views. The prospect of admission to top universities has always been the 

of elite education, a reason to put up with the fees and social stigma.

In recent years, however, Oxbridge has become more aggressively anti-independent than ever. “They must have been thinking of it for years, but parents have started talking to me openly about the prospect of sending their children to a state school for university applications,” says one independent head. “There’s evident discrimination now. We’re re-emphasising the wider Russell Group and the US. We might get to the point soon where you find that people start to say ‘hang on, there are cleverer people at Durham than there are at Cambridge now.” Her pupils are under a double squeeze, she adds, because Oxford and Cambridge aren’t cutting down on the full-fee paying international students. In 2019, the headmaster of Stowe, Dr Anthony Wallersteiner, caused a stir when he compared discrimination against public school pupils to antisemitism in Nazi Germany. According to a recent 

report, the number of Etonians getting Oxbridge offers has fallen by half since 2014.

“He made himself popcorn to watch the news about the Iraq invasion,” one contemporary said of Josh Hawley

“That’s really going to hurt [the public schools],” says Robert Verkaik, an education reform campaigner and author of 

Posh Boys: How the English Public Schools Ruin Britain. 

“Once parents see that even if you pay £40,000 a year to send your child to a top public school, and it might even be a disadvantage because you’re going to get marked down for your school, then what are you actually paying for?” In his book he tells a story about an Etonian who goes for an interview at Cambridge. “Let’s nail the elephant in the room,” says the Fellow interviewing him. “You’re an arrogant old Etonian, tell us all about it.” Verkaik points out that the 93% Club, a social mobility charity, has grown rapidly since it was founded at Bristol in 2016, and is now present in 35 universities, while public schoolboys are involved in increasingly naff ersatz-Bullingdons, such as the Exiles up at Durham.

“It’s more and more true that there’s a negative connotation or stigma associated with an expensive education,” Verkaik adds. “Rather than something to be advertised, it’s become a social and sometimes an academic embarrassment. I think the debate about the merits of these places is taking place much more than it did before Cameron arrived, and certainly before Boris turned his government into a public school chumocracy. People are aware of it, so we are having a proper debate. What these schools do is not benign, and has implications for society that we should be questioning.” Verkaik suggests three routes to curtail the independents’ influence: abolish their charitable status; charge VAT on fees; or introduce quotas on how many members of parliament and the civil service can come from independent schools.

Josh Hawley, the 41-year-old Republican junior senator, was an odd-ball teacher at St. Paul&#8217;s in London


Yet school is only one of Cambridge’s demographic ‘flags’ for entrance. Others are whether your parents went to university and postcode. Britain’s situation isn’t yet as extreme as it is in America, where there have been stories of parents divorcing so that their children could apply to college as the children of a single, lower-income parent — but this sort of thing is not beyond the realms of possibility. Nor is a kind of reverse catchment-area loopholing, where parents buy flats in deprived areas in order to trick Oxford into thinking little Tarquin is a plucky against-the-odds bootstrap case.

Perhaps mindful of the threat to their status, more independent schools have taken drastic action to improve their access and diversity, raising new funds for bursaries and scholarships. Their motivation isn’t necessarily purely altruistic. “The problem is, for decades independent schools have said “oh little Jemima is a wonderful polo player, let’s give her some sort of skills bursary,” another teacher tells me. “But means-tested, access-driven academic bursaries are the new climate for independent schools. This is quite a cynical take, but bursary kids tend to be your best [academic] performers, because they’re hand-picked. At the other end of the system, those students are going to be attractive to university access agendas. It looks good for an independent school to have brought someone in, given them an education and say ‘we got them into Oxford or Cambridge’.”

"Parents buy flats in deprived areas in order to trick Oxford into thinking little Tarquin is a plucky against-the-odds bootstrap case..."

She adds that the ancillary benefits of a top independent school are more pronounced for those who don’t come from a wealthy background: a school ski trip is less exciting if you already have a chalet in Verbier. “If you’re paying full fees, the social etiquette and connections would have come anyway from other realms of your life, but if you’re on a bursary they can be life-changing.” The model here is the American universities, which have such large endowments they are increasingly needs-blind on fees. But the public schools have a way to go, if they are ever to catch up. There’s less alumni appetite to donate money to an institution that costs more than £40,000 a year — especially if it failed to send you up to Oxbridge.

Bursary or no, if they manage to overcome the prejudice against their education to get into a top university, public schoolboys find their wings clipped when they matriculate. The pandemic has hit the hoorayest of the henrys. Last September, 

 reported that the University Pitt Club, the Cambridge private members’ club that was traditionally the home of public schoolboys, was on the verge of bankruptcy, having relied on income from letting the ground floor of its premises to Pizza Express. Alumni — who include Hollywood stars as well as sundry government ministers, bankers and barristers — were invited to contribute to a £50,000 “emergency cash appeal”. Asked about the appeal, the historian and member Andrew Roberts said the club would struggle even if it succeeded in raising the money. “I haven’t known a time when it hasn’t been in severe financial difficulties,” he told the paper. “Precariousness goes with the territory.” Meanwhile Oxford’s Bullingdon Club has all but vanished from the tabloids — its existential activity of recruiting posh students to smash up restaurants presumably having been curtailed by the lack of students and restaurants.

Oxford&#8217;s Bullingdon Club has certainly not helped the nasty stink around public schoolboys


The example of our politicians doesn’t help. By hugging hoodies, supporting gay marriage, asking to be called Dave and generally rebranding his borderline aristocratic upper-middle class background as “middle-class”, a decade ago David Cameron briefly rehabilitated his Eton-Oxford-Bullingdon route to the top. In the wake of the Iraq War and financial crisis, a safe, small-and-big-c conservative government made up of old-fashioned decent chaps seemed like a good enough idea to just-about win an election. Between Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston, every new actor in Hollywood seemed to have wandered straight out of a quad. Although the characters in 

 were monstrous, they were glamorous and handsome monsters. While the headlines focused on Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah, the triumphant 2012 and 2016 GB Olympics teams were built on private education. Even if you hated the public schoolboys and girls, it was hard to deny that they had a kind of ruthless efficiency, and an octopus-like reach into fields beyond those of law, banking and finance which they had traditionally dominated.

That feels like a long time ago. To his critics, Cameron’s cavalier approach to referendums on Scottish independence and Brexit showed the limitations of his “essay crisis” public school leadership style. Since he became Prime Minister, the Eton-Oxford Boris Johnson has frequently shown why Britons have learnt to be suspicious of bluff and bluster. What’s desirable in a comic newspaper columnist is not the same as what’s desirable in a statesman — especially not during a pandemic. After his reshuffle in early 2020, 65% of Johnson’s cabinet went to private school, including Sunak, compared to 7% of the population as a whole. Dithering and prevarication are hallmarks of the underprepared debater, but last year they had fatal consequences when Britain delayed its lockdown. Jeremy Corbyn made reform of independent schools, especially their charitable status, part of his 2019 election campaign. The last time the system was seriously threatened was in 1965, when Harold Wilson’s government looked at “integrating” independents into the state sector and Eton looked at moving to Ireland. Corbyn didn’t win, but the issue isn’t going away. Polls suggest a majority of Britons support reform of the system, although only around a fifth support an outright ban.

"What’s desirable in a comic newspaper columnist is not the same as what’s desirable in a statesman..."

All the same, history teaches us that independent schools tend to find a way to succeed despite the obstacles that are put in their path. They have faced identity crises before, especially over cultures that enabled abuse and bullying, and have responded with dramatic improvements. The pastoral care, mental health support and other kinds of care available at independent schools is second to none. Their supporters argue that they can be more nimble when it comes to modifying the curriculum to suit prevailing moods. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, alumni from dozens of institutions — including Alleyn’s, Harrow, Westminster, UCS and St Paul’s Girls’ — wrote to their old schools asking them to reform their teaching and do more to tackle racial discrimination.

Eton finds itself in the throes of an identity crisis — caught between tradition and wokeness


Eton was embroiled in a “wokeness” row last December after it suspended and then sacked Will Knowland, an English teacher who refused to take down a video on his private YouTube account in which he tried to offer “a different point of view to the radical feminist orthodoxy, which insists there’s something fundamentally toxic about masculinity.” The ensuing debate, in which the school community was said to be “in meltdown”, pitted the young, progressive headmaster, Simon Henderson, and the current pupils and parents against an old guard who thought Knowland’s sacking was an assault on free speech. Michael Bond, the OE science writer, said the defence of Knowland was “the death rattle of the old regime,” offended by the new headmaster who “wants to be in step with the world”.

These schools are quite liberal places now,” says Mark Waldron, headmaster of Ryde School on the Isle of Wight. “You’ll probably find they’re more progressive than the state sector in issues like gender identity. Liberal parents uncomfortable with the principle of private education can assuage those qualms by thinking ‘OK, I’m paying for education, but they’re being educated to be progressive international liberal modern children. It’s not all about clay pigeon shooting.’”

Waldron adds that the pandemic has revealed gaps in the level of online provision. This could be a shot in the arm for independents, with parents moving across from the state sector because in many places it’s the only way to ensure decent lessons from home.

"Private schools are more progressive than the state sector in issues like gender identity..."

“Gavin Williamson has destroyed in a year what Michael Gove achieved in five,” he says. “Our admissions are the best for many years. Some parents are choosing to go independent for the first time because in too many places it’s the difference between receiving education and receiving virtually nothing at all. But all the extras the independents can offer – outdoor, extracurricular, mental health support – have become more valuable in the past 12 months, too. We’re more aware of what we miss when we don’t play sport, see each other and socialise. They’ve become essential.”

In 2021, as the nation starts to emerge from covid, independent schools find themselves in a paradoxical position. Their online teaching has put much of the state provision to shame. Their small set sizes, facilities, and extracurricular activities look more desirable than ever from the perspective of a year-long national lockdown. If the pandemic has proved anything, it’s that nothing is less cool than being a public schoolboy, except being stuck at home with your parents. Yet the culture around independent schools has never been more hostile. Where Oxbridge leads, the rest of the country follows. Our ancient institutions are increasingly free to those that can’t afford them; more and more costly to those who can.

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