Low‐fee private schools in England and in less economically developed countries. What can be learnt from a comparison?

Abstract

There has been a growing amount of research on low‐fee private schools in less economically developed countries, but much less on low‐fee private schools in developed countries. Yet, low‐fee private schools have also been a recent feature of the educational landscape in countries such as Canada, the USA, Australia and Great Britain. This paper draws together some of my previously published work on such schools in England and considers the similarities between low‐fee private schools in developed and less economically developed countries. In particular, it examines sponsors' motivations for starting such schools and the motivations of parents for using such schools for their children.

Keywords:

• low‐fee schools
• private schools
• motivations
• Christian schools
• Tooley

Acknowledgements

This paper draws heavily on a previous paper (Walford 2001a) for some of the descriptive detail. The research comparing English and Dutch private Christian schools was supported by the Spencer Foundation. The work on this paper was partially supported by the Open Society Institute. The statements made and conclusions drawn are those of the author alone.