School Gate: Why going private is an incendiary issue in the US too

Many middle-class parents reject private schools because they are not socially and ethnically mixed and because they fear that their children may not fit in with wealthier classmates.

A study by education researchers at MTM Consulting suggests that about a million families choose not to send their children to a fee-paying school even though they could afford to.

The report says that the independent education sector, which educates about 7 per cent of children, could boost its rolls by about 30,000 pupils if it could persuade enough of these parents to change their minds.

Melanie Tucker, principal of MTM Consulting, said it had been clear for some years that independent schools had not achieved maximum penetration of their potential market because they had not done enough to tackle issues such as social exclusion and value for money.

“The independent sector is limited in size partly by capacity – most current independent schools operate at or close to their capacity – but also by its own reticence and lack of expertise in presenting itself to the market,” she said.

The report surveyed the views of 836 households with school-age children and an income of at least £50,000. It found that 23 per cent sent at least one child to an independent school.

The main reasons for not sending children to independent schools were that parents were happy with their local state secondary school (cited by 73 per cent) or because they they could not afford the fees (59 per cent).

But nearly a third (31 per cent) feared that their child would not fit in, with a similar number (30 per cent) saying independent schools were not socially or ethnically mixed enough. More than a fifth (23 per cent) feared that “the other parents are too different from us”, while a sixth (17 per cent) were worried that their children “would grow up to be too different to us”.

Pat Langham, headmistress of Wakefield Girls’ High School (fees £8,685), said: “We try to persuade them that we provide an education in which a child’s social and financial background is immaterial. It can be down to silly little things, such as making clear they don’t have to buy the uniform from our shop.”

Although some parents might choose to send their child to an independent school in the hope that it would be socially exclusive, this was rare, she said.

“I did have one parent many years ago who decided to send her daughter to another school where they had a ball gown on the school uniform list and where they thought she would meet a better class of boyfriend, but that was a one-off,” she said.

Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College (boarding fees £27,000), said the report suggested that some parents had an outmoded view of the independent sector. “Many independent schools are trying to be more socially diverse.”

Wellington will have close ties with a new state-funded academy school.

The report concludes that schools need to adopt new approaches to advertising and public relations that explain to parents how independent schools offer “great experiences” that cannot be replicated by the state sector.

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