Got loads and loads of money and a kid you need to send to school? Want to make sure that money will get your child the finest education they can get? Or maybe you’re just here because you want to have a nose into how the other half live. Every year Spear’s 500, known as the ‘the Michelin guide of wealth’, releases its Schools Index, a guide for the wealthiest people on the planet to the world’s 100 best private schools. And it’s just released its 2025 edition.
This year saw 35 UK institutions make it into the prestigious index, which is down on the 40 that featured last year. Schools are picked for a mixture of their academic prowess, their range of social, cultural, and pastoral offerings and their international reputation.
The British entries include a lot of the usual suspects – schools that are well used to getting high acclaim. Eton College made the cut, as did Harrow and Cheltenham Ladies College. And in some reassurance that they are worth the thousands and thousands of pounds in fees, nine out of ten of the country’s most expensive private schools feature.
Other schools to feature include Shrewsbury School, whose famous alumni include Charles Darwin and Sir Michael Palin; Marlborough College, once attended by the likes of Jack Whitehall, Princess Eugenie and Siegfried Sassoon; Radley College, an old haunt of Jamie Laing and Gordonstoun in Moray, Scotland which has educated the likes of King Charles, Prince Philip and Zara Tindall.
Schools that lost their place in the top 100 were Broomfield House School, King’s College School, Queen’s College, North London Collegiate School and Highgate School, which are all in London. You can find out more about all the London schools that did make this year’s Spear’s ranking here.
Spears explains that lower number of British schools in the index is down to the UK government’s recent VAT on independent schools and several other policy changes that have apparently made them less attractive to ultra-high net worth families.
It adds that those super rich people are instead sending their kids schools in Africa, East Asia and the Middle East which ‘continue to be rooted in “traditional” values that are perceived as being in decline at a number of British schools’.
All the UK schools in Spear’s Schools Index 2025
- Benenden, Kent
- Charterhouse, Surrey
- Concord College, Shropshire
- Downe House
- Wycombe Abbey, Buckinghamshire
- Belhaven Hill School, Dunbar
- Brighton College, Brighton
- Caldicott School, Buckinghamshire
- Cheltenham Ladies’ College
- Cothill House, Oxfordshire
- Cottesmore School, Crawley
- Dragon School, Oxford
- Eton College, Berkshire
- Falkner House School, Kensington and Chelsea
- Fettes College, Edinburgh
- Gordonstoun, Moray
- Harrow School, Harrow-on-the-Hill
- Hill House School, Knightsbridge
- Lambrook School, Berkshire
- Ludgrove School, Wokingham
- Marlborough College, Wiltshire
- Papplewick School, Ascot
- Radley College, Oxfordshire
- Rugby School, Rugby
- Sevenoaks School, Kent
- Shrewsbury School, Shrewsbury
- St George’s School Windsor Castle, Windsor
- St Paul’s Girls’ School, London
- St Paul’s School, London
- Summer Fields, Oxford
- Sussex House School, London
- Thomas’s Battersea, London
- Westminster School, London
- Westminster Under School, London
- Winchester College, Buckinghamshire
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For a second opinion, check out the schools that made it onto Carfax Education’s latest Schools Index. We’ve also got a list of England's 10 best private schools based on last year’s A-level and GCSE results and the best for getting students Oxbridge offers. See which comprehensive state schools ranked highly on the Sunday Times Power Guide here, and the best selective and grammar schools, according to the same guide. If you want to check out other league tables, these are the UK's best state secondary schools based on 2024 GCSE results, according to Which School Advisor.
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