Eton, Harrow and Winchester may be the most famous names in the English private school system – but it is lesser-known schools that are providing a better academic return on fees.
Telegraph Money’s analysis compared the fees charged by schools with their results at GCSEs and A-Levels to uncover the highest-performing schools for the best price.
Withington Girls’ School in Manchester came top of the pile. The school, which costs £14,676 a year, saw 93pc of GCSEs and 88pc of A-Levels taken by its pupils marked at the top grades last year.
The £14,460-a-year St Michael’s School in Carmarthenshire was the highest ranked co-education school in the country, with 88pc of GCSE grades marked at nine to seven and 80pc of A-Levels receiving A* to A.
Meanwhile, the City of London School tops the list for boys’ schools, with over 90pc of exams receiving top marks at both GCSE and A-Level.
The analysis – which does not assess factors such as extracurricular activities or the quality of facilities – is based on 2023-24 day fee prices compared to grades from the summer of 2022.
School fees are adjusted to account for regional variations in wages.
Where schools have not updated their fees, The Telegraph has estimated them using data from previous years and assumed an average 7.1pc annual increase.
Across almost 400 fee-paying English private schools offering A-Levels and GCSEs, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunaks’ alma maters, Eton and Winchester, appear halfway down the list.
In terms of fees versus grades, Eton – which has educated 20 prime ministers – ranked a 242 on the list.
Other well-known private schools with long reputations for excellence, such as Winchester, Radley College in Oxfordshire and Marlborough College, ranked much lower compared to cheaper schools whose students achieved better grades (see table below).
Larger, historic private schools like these often have higher expenditure than their smaller counterparts. This is because they have older, listed buildings to maintain, and have much higher staffing costs. Eton alone employed 50 members of staff who earned over £100,000 a year in 2022.
Amid a prolonged cost of living crisis, and with rising mortgage rates and inflation playing havoc with household finances, families are likely to pay even closer attention to school fees than normal. And fees are still rising – especially at the larger, better-known schools.
According to data from School Fees Checker, a website, and wealth manager St. James’s Place, private school fees – which stagnated during the Covid-19 pandemic – jumped 5.1pc in 2022, up from 4pc from the previous year.
This means that, even if a parent earns a six-figure salary, they could struggle to afford many private schools, according to Alexandra Loydon, SJP’s director of private clients.
“Spending money on private education is often seen as the best way to set your children up for future success. But if you thought choosing the right school – and getting in – was hard, the scale of the fees and the financial commitment required is enormous,” she said.
Despite the cost, demand has remained high. The latest Independent Schools Council census shows there are 544,316 pupils at its member private schools, up more than 8pc in the last decade, a record high.
Pupils at independent schools represent about 7pc of all pupils in the UK.
ISC chairman, Barnaby Lenon, said: “Independent schools take a much wider view of education than just exam results. Boarding schools in particular offer a wide range of activities outside the classroom and subjects inside the classroom.
“What is more, parents understand that a great education these days means much more than marginal differences in exam results.”