ABSTRACT

When Rae wrote these words he was thinking of particular political and financial challenges experienced during a period of Labour government in Britain. That capacity of fee-paying schools to survive, or more accurately, the impact of one of their more ‘extraordinary’ and radical solutions to threats to survival, forms the focus of this chapter. As the demand for boarding education and the number of traditional consumers of feepaying education both declined, some of the most prestigious as well as many lesser-known fee-paying boys’ schools in Britain took the step of recruiting girls as part of their survival strategy. With a few exceptions, (see Burgess, 1990; Cresser, 1993; Price, 1993; Walford, 1983, 1986), this significant change in fee-paying schools has attracted little research interest, particularly in the last decade, even though the process continues and increasing numbers of former boys’ schools now accept girls and describe themselves as co-educational.