What actually differs between state schools in England
The category names are the least interesting thing about them. What matters is four practical questions: who decides admissions, whether the national curriculum applies, whether teachers must be qualified, and who employs the staff. Set out that way the categories stop being bureaucratic and start being useful.
- Community schools. The local authority is the admission authority, employs the staff and owns the land. National curriculum applies; teachers need qualified teacher status.
- Voluntary controlled schools. Run with a voluntary body, usually a church, which holds the land — but the local authority is still the admission authority, unless that has been delegated, and still the employer.
- Voluntary aided schools. The governing body is the admission authority and the employer; the land is held by trustees or a foundation. National curriculum and qualified teacher status both apply.
- Foundation schools. The governing body is the admission authority and employer, and holds the land or shares it with a charitable foundation.
- Academies and free schools. The academy trust is the admission authority and the employer. The national curriculum does not apply — the statutory requirement is a curriculum that is "balanced and broadly based" — and teachers need not hold qualified teacher status unless the funding agreement says so. Free schools are not a separate legal category: they are academies established as new schools.
- Special academies are the exception to the qualification point: all their teachers must hold qualified teacher status.
- City technology colleges remain a listed category — free, independent of the council, centrally funded with company contributions, focused on science and technology.
- State boarding schools provide the education free and charge for the boarding, with priority for children who have a particular need to board.
Two things follow that often surprise people. Academies are not "maintained schools" in the statutory sense, so guidance written about maintained schools frequently does not reach them. And university technical colleges, which are a type of academy, do not appear on the government's own list of school types at all.
For scale, on the January 2026 census: academies and free schools were 83.9 per cent of secondary schools and 48.8 per cent of primary schools — 48.2 per cent of all schools, but 60.4 per cent of all pupils, since academies skew larger. Independent schools educated 6.3 per cent of pupils.
Selection, and what is actually permitted
No new selective school can be opened in England, and the bar operates through two separate routes. For maintained schools, legislation of 2006 prohibits admission arrangements providing for selection by ability unless the school is already a grammar school or uses a permitted form. For academies and free schools, the Academies Act requires an academy to educate pupils of different abilities, which rules selection out by definition. Departmental guidance states it plainly: legislation prohibits the establishment of new grammar schools.
What remains lawful is narrower than it sounds, and worth separating from grammar-school selection:
- Pre-existing arrangements at schools selective before 1998, frozen at the lowest proportion since reached.
- Banding, which groups applicants by ability to produce a representative intake rather than to exclude.
- Aptitude for a particular subject at a specialist school, capped at 10 per cent of each year group, and it must be aptitude rather than an ability test.
There are 163 grammar schools in England, taking about five per cent of the secondary cohort. They cannot be created, but they can expand, including onto satellite sites, provided the new site is genuinely part of the existing school — judged case by case on shared governance, staffing and admissions. That is how the selective share has grown without any new selective school opening. Removing selection is also possible, through the statutory process, with the local authority deciding.
Faith schools, and the cap that stayed
Giving priority to applicants of a particular faith is lawful: equality legislation specifically disapplies the prohibition on religious discrimination in admissions for schools with a designated religious character, and disapplies it for acts of worship at any school. Faith schools must follow the national curriculum but may choose what they teach in religious education, and anyone may apply to one. Around 99 per cent of existing state-funded faith schools can give priority on faith grounds.
New mainstream free schools with a religious designation are the exception: when oversubscribed they must allocate at least half their places without reference to faith. That cap sits in the school's funding agreement rather than in statute, and it does not apply to new voluntary aided schools — a separate capital route was created precisely so that new faith schools could open without it.
The cap was reviewed and survived. A consultation ran from May to June 2024 proposing to remove it for new and existing free schools, and to allow special academies with a faith ethos to be designated with a religious character. The outcome, published on 17 April 2026, recorded 3,668 responses with 66 per cent disagreeing with both proposals, and the government decided not to proceed. The 50 per cent cap therefore remains, and special academies were not given religious designation.
Independent schools
An independent school is defined by what it does rather than what it charges: a school not maintained by a local authority providing full-time education for five or more pupils of compulsory school age, or for even one such pupil who has an education, health and care plan or is looked after. Whether provision is full-time is a question of fact; eighteen hours a week usually counts, and fewer does not automatically rule it out.
Registration with the Secretary of State is required before the school operates, and it is not an automatic right — the decision turns on whether the standards are likely to be met. Running an unregistered school is a criminal offence, carrying up to fifty-one weeks' imprisonment on summary conviction.
Registered schools must meet the independent school standards at all times. There are eight parts: quality of education; spiritual, moral, social and cultural development; welfare, health and safety; suitability of staff and proprietors; premises and accommodation; provision of information; handling of complaints; and quality of leadership and management.
On the two questions people usually ask: no, the national curriculum does not apply — what is required is a written curriculum policy covering linguistic, mathematical, scientific, technological, human and social, physical and creative areas, and the standards expressly contemplate schools following another country's curriculum. And no, teachers need not hold qualified teacher status; staff qualifications are checked only where appropriate.
Inspection is split. Ofsted carries out the pre-registration inspection and the first standard inspection, inspects residential special schools annually, and can be directed to inspect any school at any time. A school may transfer to the Independent Schools Inspectorate, but only after a first Ofsted inspection has found all standards met, and only if it belongs to an affiliated association. Standard inspections then run roughly every three years.
Two tax changes landed in close succession. Value added tax applies to private school fees for terms beginning on or after 1 January 2025, with the policy taking effect from 30 October 2024 and anti-forestalling provisions reaching back to 29 July 2024; nursery provision is outside it, and where a local authority funds a place because an education, health and care plan requires that school, the authority can reclaim the tax. Separately, charitable rate relief was removed from private school premises in England only for financial years beginning on or after 1 April 2025, with an exception for institutions wholly or mainly educating people with such plans.
Home education
The parental duty is to cause a child to receive efficient full-time education suitable to their age, ability and aptitude, "either by regular attendance at school or otherwise". Those last two words are the legal basis for home education, and nothing requires the national curriculum or any set number of hours.
Permission is not generally needed in England, and neither is registration — but "generally" is doing real work in that sentence. Consent is required in two cases: where a school attendance order is in force, and where the child is registered at a special school. A child at a mainstream school needs no permission even if they have an education, health and care plan. A school must accept a complete withdrawal, though it can refuse part-time home education alongside attendance.
What a local authority can do is limited but not nothing. It must make arrangements to identify children in its area who are not registered at school and do not appear to be receiving suitable education. It may make informal enquiries, which a parent in England is not obliged to answer. Where it appears education may not be suitable it serves a notice giving at least fifteen days to satisfy it, and if it remains unsatisfied and school attendance is expedient it must serve a school attendance order. Breaching such an order carries a fine of up to £2,500, a maximum set by statute.
The other three nations
- Wales. Community, voluntary controlled, voluntary aided and foundation schools, as in England — but no academies and no free schools; the category does not exist in Welsh law. The Curriculum for Wales replaced the former basic curriculum under legislation of 2021; religious education was renamed Religion, Values and Ethics and must be pluralistic, covering non-religious convictions, and relationships and sexuality education is mandatory. Welsh-medium schools are not a separate statutory category, and Welsh-language ability cannot be used as an oversubscription criterion.
- Scotland. Most schools are council schools, described as state funded. There are no academies, no free schools, no state grammar schools and no academic selection in the state sector. A small group of grant-aided schools are funded directly by the Scottish Government rather than a council, mainly serving additional support needs. Denominational schools sit within the council sector. Independent schools register with Scottish Ministers through a Registrar of Independent Schools and are inspected by the schools inspectorate, with boarding inspected separately twice a year — a different regulator and a different inspectorate from England. The curriculum is Curriculum for Excellence; there is no "national curriculum" in the English statutory sense.
- Northern Ireland. Grant-aided is the umbrella term, and the sub-categories carry real consequences for who employs whom. Controlled schools are managed through boards of governors with the Education Authority as employer. Catholic maintained schools have land held by Catholic trustees, with a separate council as the teachers' employing authority. Voluntary grammar schools are run under their own management schemes, employ their own staff, and are the academically selective ones — Northern Ireland retains post-primary selection. Integrated schools exist in two forms, controlled integrated and grant-maintained integrated. Irish-medium education is a medium of instruction rather than a management category and exists in both controlled and maintained forms. Inspection is by the Education and Training Inspectorate, not Ofsted.
Home education differs too, and Scotland is the outlier. Scottish parents must obtain the council's consent to withdraw a child from a public school, though consent must not be unreasonably withheld, no reason need be given, and a decision is expected within six weeks. Consent is not needed where the child never attended a public school in that area, or is leaving an independent school. There is no statutory right of appeal — the route is the council's complaints procedure, then the ombudsman. In Wales a written notice to the school suffices, with the name removed within ten school days, except for a child at a special school. Northern Ireland needs no permission, but the school principal must be told, and the Education Authority must be told where a child leaves a special school.
What the evidence says about type and outcomes
Two cautions before the findings. The strongest studies are eight to twelve years old, and they pre-date the mass academisation of primary schools. And on independent schools there is no evidence meeting a reasonable standard on outcomes net of intake, so they are left out rather than characterised.
On grammar schools, the honest answer is that the causal question is unresolved and the composition question is not. Comparing similar pupils, one analysis from 2016 found grammar pupils scoring about a third of a grade higher in each of eight subjects, and about half a grade higher for disadvantaged pupils — but found no net effect nationally, with a small negative effect for non-attenders in heavily selective areas. A study published in 2018 using a full cohort concluded that grammar results were no better than expected once differences in intake were accounted for. A third strand, looking at adult earnings, found earnings more unequal in selective areas, with system differences explaining between 14 and 18 per cent of the gap between high and low earners.
What is not disputed is who attends. In 2018, 93.5 per cent of grammar pupils had high prior attainment against 42.6 per cent nationally, and 0.1 per cent had low prior attainment against 12.7 per cent. Nor is the access problem disputed: the department's own evaluation of a scheme to widen entry found that grammars giving priority to disadvantaged children rose from 63 of 163 to 136 between 2017 and 2022, while the disadvantaged share of grammar intake moved only from 7.2 to 7.9 per cent. Its own conclusion was that the number of disadvantaged children in grammar schools generally remains low.
On academies, the evidence does not support the claim usually made for them. The clearest finding is that academy status is not an automatic solution to school improvement, and that the effect depends on the type of academy rather than on the structure. The early sponsored academies opened before 2010 — a small group replacing failing schools with substantial extra investment — showed real gains, roughly a grade in each of five subjects after four years. Sponsored academies created after 2010 produced inconclusive results, with improvement in the year before conversion that faded afterwards. For converter academies the effect was small or undetectable, with no evidence of improvement among those previously rated good or below.
The most useful finding for a parent is comparative: variation within multi-academy trusts, and within local authorities, was far greater than the difference between them. Trusts appear at both the top and the bottom of the distribution. Which particular trust or authority a school belongs to predicts outcomes better than whether it is an academy at all. All of this concerns secondary schools; nothing comparable was found on primary academies.
What is legislated to change
Legislation passed in April 2026 would alter three of the statements above, and none of the relevant provisions has been commenced — each is in force only for the purpose of making regulations.
- Academies would have to follow the national curriculum. The provision substitutes the curriculum requirement in the Academies Act so that an academy's curriculum must include the national curriculum, and voids conflicting terms in academy arrangements.
- Qualified teacher status could be required at academies specified in regulations.
- A register of children not in school would be maintained by every local authority, with parents required to supply specified information, and consent to withdraw a child from school would be needed where the child is subject to a child protection enquiry or plan, or attends a special school. The government's own guidance on home education does not yet mention any of this.
In Wales the same children-not-in-school provisions will apply only when Welsh Ministers bring them into force; the Senedd gave consent in March 2026 and the decision on timing falls to the next Welsh Government.
For how to apply once a type of school has been settled on, see secondary school admissions; for reading the published performance data, school results; and for the practical side of educating at home, home education in practice.