Quote:
Originally Posted by 4691mls
Yes, in the US, a public school is publicly funded (tax/government dollars) and is open to the public (generally, any student in the geographic area the school covers can attend). I've always wonder why the term "public" is applied to schools in Britain that we would call "private" in the US. Maybe one of the Brits on here can explain it?
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Public schools are called that because they were founded with the aim of being open to the education of anyone who could pay their fees, as opposed to the only other schools of the time, which were religious schools open only to members of that religious faith. The first school to call itself a "public school" was Eton College, founded in 1440.