Record numbers at private schools

Record numbers of parents are sending children to private schools despite improving standards in the state sector.

More than half of all children are educated privately in some boroughs - highlighting serious questions about public confidence in the state system.

The surge in the private sector is revealed on the eve of a major government announcement on the future of state education. It will come as a further significant embarrassment to the Governmentcasting doubt on its performance on education. Ministers admit many parents have lost faith in comprehensives and believe radical measures are needed to restore their trust.

The new figures were released by the Department for Education in response to a Parliamentary-question and are based on statistics from every local education authority in the country. They provide the most up-to-date information on the number of pupils attending fee-paying schools and a fuller picture than statistics released by the Independent Schools Council

(ISC) earlier this year. The new figures show that a total of 586,940 children are enrolled at private schools - nearly 80,000 more than previously thought.

Widely publicised figures released by the ISC in April, which showed total numbers of 508,027, did not include data from about 1,000 schools that do not belong to the organisation.

The new statistics reveal that across the UK, seven per cent of children now go to private schools. A growing number of parents in London are particularly reluctant to send their children to local comprehensives, with a record

10.5 per cent of pupils now being educated in the independent sector. In inner London, the figure is even higher, at 14 per cent.

A borough-by-borough breakdown shows that just over 50 per cent of children in Kensington and Chelsea, and more than a quarter of those living in Richmond and Camden, attend private schools.

Fee-paying schools cater for more than a fifth of children in Wandsworth, and a similar number in Hammersmith and Fulham. This comes despite record rises in fees this year, with boarding schools charging up to ?18,000 a year. The average London day school charges ?8,700.

Demand for private education is so high that experts believe entrepreneurs will seek to cash in.

Dick Davison, of the Independent Schools Council, said: "It is clear that there is a very large well of potential demand for independent schools. The only constraint is supply. Most independent schools are operating at capacity.

"Most private schools are charities but businessmen are already opening profitmaking schools. When we ask parents if they would send their children to private schools if they could afford it, more than half say they would."

The Government has ploughed billions into improving education, increasing average spending per pupil by ?1,000 since 1997.

The investment has led to dramatic improvements in results in some of the poorest-performing schools. Ministers have made efforts to target failing schools in London - singling out secondary schools in Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Southwark for extra resources.

But in a debate on London schools at Westminster last week, education minister Stephen Twigg admitted state schools in the capital were still a "mixed picture". He added: "Part of the challenge we face is to restore confidence in the system as a whole."

A spokeswoman for the Education Department tried to play down the latest figures, describing the increases as "not significant".

She said: "The proportion of pupils in the private sector has remained around seven per cent for a number of years. We see no significant trend either to or away from the independent sector."