Independent schools were always for a small minority. Among independent schools I’m reasonably confident boarding schools were a majority. They were not for an

Independent schools were always for a small minority. Among independent schools I’m reasonably confident boarding schools were a majority. They were not for an elite. They were for the economically successful, a middle class much smaller than what we have now but it was not unusual in small town or rural Ireland in the ‘60s for the children of shopkeepers or successful farmers to send children to board for secondary school. That’s a definition of elite so expansive as to be meaningless.