by Children at the top 250 private English schools have more than 10 times as much outdoor space as those who go to state schools, exclusive Guardian analysis can reveal.
The analysis found that a schoolboy who charges fees at Eton has access to 140 times more green space than the average English school pupil. Experts criticized the “scenic” and “gross” inequalities.
The Guardian mapped the land owned and used by the best private schools in the country – an area that had never been established before. Using publicly available information, combined with satellite tools to map school buildings and green space, the analysis showed:
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The average pupil in one of England’s best private schools has access to around 322 square meters of green space, whereas the average state school pupil has access to around 32 square meters of green space: a ratio of 10:1.
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Eton students enjoy the largest land area of any school in the country, with schoolboys having access to 4,445 square meters per pupil per area, 140 times more than what is available to a typical state school student. The public also has access to some of that land.
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Private school campuses include tennis courts, golf courses, boating lakes, swimming pools, equestrian centers, wilderness areas, and remote camping lodges.
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In contrast, some state schools have little or no green space for their students.
As the UK heads to the polls to choose between the Conservatives and the Labor party, which has promised to remove the VAT exemption for independent school fees against some strong lobbying from the sector, the results are a reminder of the gulf profoundly between the Department. the early experiences of children from wealthy families and the rest of the population; only 7% of children attend an independent school.
“While the inequalities in access to green space between independent and state schools are not surprising,” said Professor Michael Marmot, director of the UCL Institute for Health Equity, and author of the landmark report Fair Society Healthy Lives in 2010. more often referred to as the Marmot review).
“Eton’s playing fields may be a well-worn cliche; The lack of playing fields at your local state school is an all too present reality.”
As part of our series Access to green space, we’ve been looking at how much space our children have at school – and how much time they get to enjoy it. Over several months, our data team compiled detailed information about the amount of land held by the top private schools in England, and then used satellite data and a number of other variables to calculate how much of that was accessible to pupils as green space.
We also looked at the amount of outdoor space available to English state schools, and spoke to experts about some of the issues facing our children. As Tina Farr from St Ebbes primary school in Oxford told us: “We need to start running schools in line with healthy child development. We can give them six nutritious hours a day and we absolutely must.”
The Guardian analyzed all the English schools in the Heads’ Conference (HMC) – the association of heads of the UK’s leading private day and boarding schools, also described as public or independent schools. He calculated green space within the campus as open space related to the school and within a radius of 3 miles (5km), and therefore accessible to the students.
Winchester college, where the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, went to school, has the most land in total – more than 8,000 acres – but the second largest for students because, according to its location Web, students only have access to about 250 acres, and the rest appear to be land holdings. The Eton campus covers 1666 acres, of which students have access to just under 1500 acres.
Lord Wandsworth College has the third largest area of land, with a 1,079 acre campus, of which 1,027 acres is green space within 5km of the school.
Stonyhurst has a 1,050 acre campus, Stowe has 850 acres, and Radley college has 847.
In total the schools own 38,086 acres of land (154.1 million square metres), of which 19,430 (78.6 million square metres), according to the Guardian’s analysis, are accessible to students.
Almost 245,000 students attended these private schools in the 2021/22 academic year, which means they had an average of 322 square meters of green space for each student. This is probably a conservative estimate.
Meanwhile, according to the Department of Education, state schools have 263,300,000 square meters of green space and playgrounds, which equates to 32 square meters for each student, a calculation based on the average number of students enrolled in state schools between 2017 and 2021 (between 8 square meters). million and 9 million a year). According to the Guardian’s calculations, private school pupils have access to 10 times as much outdoor space as state schools.
The 250 HMC members surveyed by the Guardian make the most of that land, placing a heavy emphasis on sport, outdoor activities and the importance of the outdoors in their curriculum and sales material. Eton tells parents of prospective pupils that “we believe that boys learn as much, if not more, outside the classroom as they do inside the classroom”. A rugby school says its educational model is one “in which all aspects of life – academic and artistic, spiritual and sporting – are part of an indivisible whole”.
However, some state schools have very little green space for their students at all, and budget constraints and curriculum demands often mean that sport and other outdoor activities cannot be prioritized in the same way, which experts told the Council. Guardian.
Marmot said that unequal access to green space is likely to have a profound effect on children’s mental and physical well-being, citing evidence that exercise in green space improves mental health and reduces mortality inequality, and is also likely to have an impact on increased rates of childhood obesity. “A school with limited access to playing fields or open space will find it much harder to fit exercise into children’s lives,” he said.
He added: “What impact does it have on a child or young person knowing that pupils in the independent school are more privileged in almost every way, including access to green space? Differential access to green space is yet another aspect where the state school student is at a moderate disadvantage.”
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Studies have shown the cognitive boost that a green environment gives to children, and one study in Belgium linked green space to higher IQs. “There is more and more evidence that a green environment is related to our cognitive function, such as memory and attention skills,” said Tim Nawrot, professor of environmental epidemiology at the University of Hasselt in Belgium, who worked on the study that.
A lack of green space for children is a health and equality issue, according to Dan Paskins, UK impact director at Save the Children. “This new analysis from the Guardian shows that there is great inequality in the school system and that is a matter of great concern to us. Bearing in mind a child’s right to play is upheld in the UN convention on the rights of the child, which the UK signed 34 years ago, the UK government urgently needs to look at how it can significantly improve access to spaces green for school children from all economic. backgrounds.”
Dr Sarah Clarke, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said ministers must take urgent action to boost state school pupils’ access to green space. “This investigation provides another clear example of how some people in society – through no fault of their own – are unable to make the healthy choices that will help them live a healthy life. Everything from where we live, to the food we eat, to the air we breathe has a direct impact on our health – and access to outdoor spaces is no different.”
The Guardian contacted all the private schools mentioned in this article. The people who came back to us said that providing green space for underprivileged children is a priority, and they gave examples of how they do so, to some extent. Eton told us that much of their land is farmed or “open space enjoyed by the whole community”. Winchester says it has a wide range of community connections, including volunteer programs with several local schools, as well as hosting numerous events within its facilities.
Lord Wandsworth College partners with a number of local schools; Stonyhurst makes its facilities and green spaces available to families and local schools, as well as running collaborative initiatives and “fostering community engagement outside of traditional academic activities”. And Stowe said all their facilities can be used by visiting clubs and schools: “Every child deserves a quality education and a good start in life and we are committed to reducing social inequality. To that end Stowe has created transformative partnerships with a growing network of organizations.”
Neither HMC nor the Department of Education made any comment.
