No "Public Schools" in the UK refers to a very specific subset of fee-paying schools mentioned in the Public Schools Act of 1868 (sometimes informally includes a couple of others). Private Schools are the other fee-paying schools. What a non-Brit might think of as "public" schools are actually called "state" schools in the UK
The way I explain it to American friends is that any member of the public, if they have £45,000+ per year to spare, can send their son to Eton. Simple.
Is that really true though? Money is the only factor in admission? No entrance exams? No rejections for “families we don’t want to be associated with”? No special admittances for prestigious families that don’t get charged?
If not, maybe that explanation isn’t a very helpful one.
Well, it was a joke, but to take an earnest question seriously, there are entrance exams, but they're not especially hard, particularly if you've been coached beforehand, as many of these kids will be. Theoretically no special cases, and "celebrity" would certainly be frowned on at Eton / Harrow - these are old-money families, not nouveau-riches.
The funny thing is that this entrance exam to Eton is effectively their ticket to the top, once you're there you're on easy street. Boris Johnson attended Eton, didn't achieve particularly good results but cruised into a scholarship at Oxford. I attended a decent state school and had a fellow student who had literally top grades in all the exams he'd taken (eight "1"s at Standard Grade, five "A"s at higher, five "A"s at Advanced Higher) and his application to Oxford was touch-and-go. Now, such grades do not guarantee anyone a place at Oxford as there is a lot of competition, but you can be sure that if he had two English A-levels at grade B or C[0] he wouldn't even have been considered. The application would go instantly to the bin.
This is not true of Eton (or I guess Harrow or the other public schools).
[0] - Or whatever Boris Johnson got, I can't recall exactly, they were spectacularly subpar but he's masterfully scrubbed them from the internet
I edited the comment — “celebrity” might be the wrong word, but I was thinking that they might care more about having a noble’s kid attend than the 45k, and, like you just implied, they’d reject nouveau-riches even if they had the money, especially if the riches came from a source that’s frowned upon.
So it’s not a very good joke, as it implies that there aren’t any other filters, despite their intense concern for reputation.
The point is that the school won't reject a child because their parents don't work in a particular industry or belong to a certain religious organisation, as was sometimes the case with "private" schools previously. Both private and public schools pre-date state schools in the UK, hence the confusion over the terminology.
Our son went to a public school and my wife came back from a meeting at the school amused that she had managed to catch sight of the schools evaluation of us as parents - she scored very highly as an advocate (Scottish equivalent of a barrister) and I was scored down for being a humble computing type.
It’s supposedly meritocratic by academic ability and potential, now - about 25% of pupils receive bursaries covering a substantial percentage of the fees, but that means the other 75% require parents capable of spending £45,000 pa on their education.
Given the life-long opportunities an Eton education affords someone, and the likely backgrounds of that 75%, you’d be reasonable in suspecting “a system of perpetuated inherited privilege”.
When these schools were founded, the alternative was to have private tuition - as opposed to be taught "publicly" and live with children from other families.
(The school I went to was founded in 1513 - but is known as a private school rather than a public one because it was never a boarding school).
Back when I was a youngster, I was at a private school (council was paying for me) which was making a big deal about getting admitted to the Headmasters' Conference because that meant they could now refer to themselves as a public school.
(Although that school isn't currently in the HC, presumably because it was run by Christian Brothers and one of the teachers has since been imprisoned for inappropriate behaviour with children.)
Nine prestigious schools were investigated by Clarendon (including Merchant Taylors' School and St. Paul's School) and seven subsequently reformed by the Act: Eton, Shrewsbury, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, Westminster, and Charterhouse.
Confusingly, "Public School" refers to the most elite (and very exclusive) schools in the UK
In UK "public school" means private school, generally old ones with traditions going back to British Empire, or subscribing to a similar ideology. Training the new elites, building character, connections etc.
They do tend to be very good schools but raise issues about social mobility, elitism etc (they tend to be expensive).