Public school
The term public school is commonly used in England and Wales to refer to a group of around 10 per cent[citation needed] of the independent schools in the country, which are members of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and are in general older, more expensive and more exclusive.[1][2][3] Amongst the most famous public schools in Britain are the "Clarendon Schools", which were the subject of the Clarendon Commission of 1861 to 1864 and the consequent Public Schools Acts: Charterhouse School, Eton College, Harrow School, Merchant Taylors' School, Rugby School, Shrewsbury School, St Paul's School, Westminster School and Winchester College. Until the late medieval period most schools were controlled by the church and had specific entrance criteria; others were restricted to the sons of members of guilds, trades or livery companies. The need for professional trades in an increasingly secularised society required schools for the sons of the gentry which were independent from ecclesiastical authority and open to all. From the 16th century onward, boys' boarding schools were founded or endowed for public use.[5] The term "public school" began to be used in the early 19th century to describe a number of more prominent grammar schools, but prior to the Clarendon Commission, a Royal Commission that investigated the public school system in the United Kingdom between 1861 and 1864, there was no clear definition.[6] The Clarendon Commission investigated nine of the more established schools: the day schools St Paul's and the Merchant Taylors', and seven boarding schools: Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Westminster and Winchester.[7] A report published by the commission formed the basis of the Public Schools Act 1868. In the Act a public school was defined as one open to the paying public from anywhere in the country, as opposed to, for example, a local school only open to local residents, or a religious school open only to members of a certain church, or private education at home (usually only practical for the very wealthy, such as the nobility, who could afford tutors).[8] The Act formally recognised the public school status of the nine Clarendon schools, but did not stipulate that only these schools were to be regarded as such.[9] The Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal discussed the meaning of "public school" in 1887 in the case of Blake v Mayor of London, which ruled that the City of London School was a public school. Lord Justice Fry referred to "...certain characteristics which denote a public school. It has a perpetual foundation: a portion of its income is derived from charity: it is managed by a public body: no private person has any interest in the school: no profit was or is in the contemplation of its founders or managers: and, lastly, the object of the school is the benefit of a large class of persons. All these circumstances concurring, I think this institution may be said to be a public school."[10] Since the late 19th century the term "public school" has been extended to include those schools whose principals qualified for membership of the Headmasters' Conference (now the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference).[11] The use of the term in this wider sense was established by the Public Schools Yearbook, published for the first time in 1889.[12] Traditionally, most of these public schools were all boys and full boarding, meaning that all pupils boarded at the school. But most now allow day pupils and/or have turned either partially or fully coeducational. Only four senior schools in the country still retain the full-boarding tradition: Eton College, Radley College, Winchester College and Harrow School. As well as the traditional public schools there are also the Roman Catholic public schools which include: Ampleforth College, Stonyhurst College and Downside School.