ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates that the scale of working-class private schooling over time cannot be determined with any great precision. It is concerned with the terminology of the working-class private school as it evolved in the nineteenth century, and argues that the labels that have been used to signify such schools are in themselves important constituents of the ways in which they have been understood and explained. The book tries to make some sense of the jumble of available educational statistics and attempts to give some idea of the probable scale of working-class private schooling. It offers description and analysis of the characteristic organisation and activity of the schools themselves. The book tells the story of the final confrontation of the tradition of independent working-class schooling by its official, publicly sanctioned rival, and of the unsurprising outcome.
