RECORD NUMBERS AT PRIVATE SCHOOLS

The mounting pressures of travel and long working hours have led more parents to pay independent schools to give their children the care and attention they cannot provide at home, headteachers said.

New figures from the Independent Schools Council (ISC) showed 509,093 children were being privately educated in the UK this year - the highest number ever recorded.

The rise comes despite a national decline in the number of young children of school age and a 5.9% increase in average private school fees.

Independent schools suggested their growing popularity was partly due to the high profile Tony Blair has given education in the past 10 years, which has made parents more discerning.

Nigel Richardson, chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference of elite schools, said many hard working parents were attracted by the stability that a private education offers.

Hilary Moriarty, from the Boarding Schools Association, said the number of children in boarding schools was now holding steady after a significant decline over previous years. "Time-poor parents value all that independent schools can offer," she said.

"If it is a boarding school as well there will be many of them pitching in for two nights a week flexi-boarding, a couple of nights every fortnight, or whatever."

Children benefit from the "all round care, the complete 24-hour day" which boarding schools provide, she said. The ISC's annual census found that average independent school fees had risen 5.9% to £11,142 per year by January 2007. The ISC insisted that the rise in fees was in line with service inflation.

Class sizes in private schools remain far smaller than in the state sector, with the lowest ever staff-pupil ratio of 9.7 children on average for every teacher.