Up to World War II, the role of public schools in preparing pupils for the gentlemanly elite meant that such education, particularly in its classical focus and social mannerism, became a mark of the ruling class. For three hundred years, the officers and senior administrators of the British Empire usually sent their sons back home to boarding schools for education as gentlemen, often for uninterrupted periods of a year or more at a time. The 19th-century public school ethos promoted ideas of service to Crown and Empire, understood by the broader public in familiar sentiments such as "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game" and "the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton" - the latter sometimes but probably wrongly attributed to Wellington. Many ex-pupils, like those from other schools, had, and still have, a nostalgic affection for their old schools (George Orwell remembered being "interested and happy" at Eton,) and a public school tie and "old boy network" of former pupils could be useful in a career. The English public school model influenced the 19th-century development of Scottish private schools, but a tradition of the gentry sharing primary education with their tenants kept Scotland comparatively egalitarian.
Acceptance of social elitism was reduced by the two world wars, but despite portrayals of the products of public schools as "silly asses" and "toffs", the old "system" at its most pervasive continued well into the 1960s, reflected in contemporary popular fiction such as Len Deighton's The IPCRESS File, with its sub-text of supposed tension between the grammar school educated protagonist and the public school background of his more senior but inept colleague.
Postwar social change has however gradually been reflected across Britain's educational system, while at the same time fears of problems with state education have pushed some parents, who can afford the fees or whose pupils qualify for bursaries or scholarships, towards public schools and other schools in the independent sector. In 2009 typical fees were up to £30,000 per annum for boarders.
As of 2015 Prime Minister David Cameron (Eton) and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (St Paul's) were both educated at Clarendon schools. While the outgoing Conservative Prime Minister in 1964 {Douglas-Home) had been educated at Eton College and the incoming Labour Prime Minister in 1997 (Blair) had been at Fettes College, all six British Prime Ministers in office between 1964 and 1997 and 2007 to 2010 were educated at state schools (Wilson, Heath, Thatcher and Major at grammar schools and Callaghan and Brown at other state secondary schools). Prime Minister Theresa May's secondary school education also was primarily in the state sector.
While members of the aristocracy and landed gentry no longer dominate independent schools, several studies have shown that such schools still retain a degree of influence over the country's professional and social elite despite educating less than 10% of the population. A 2012 study published by the Sutton Trust noted that 44% of the 7,637 individuals examined whose names appeared in the birthday lists of The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent or The Independent on Sunday during 2011 - across all sectors, including politics, business, the arts and the armed forces - were educated at independent or private schools. It also found that 10 elite fee-paying schools (specifically Eton, Winchester, Charterhouse, Rugby, Westminster, Marlborough, Dulwich, Harrow, St Paul's, Wellington) produced 12% of the leading high-flyers examined in the study. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission came to a similar conclusion in a 2014 study of the professions: 71% of senior judges, 62% of senior armed forces officers, 55% of Whitehall permanent secretaries and 50% of members of the House of Lords had been privately educated.