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A MAINSTREAM economic approach to understanding Edinburgh’s “mass market” for elite schooling reveals little we already know – in Edinburgh, one in four pupils are educated at independent schools.

A startling figure and a regional anomaly. Nationally around 4% of schoolchildren are in private education, and around 7% attend a private school across the UK. So why is this?

Surprisingly, there is not much research on private schools in Scotland

Attempting to understand the individual choices that lead to a quarter of Edinburgh’s children attending a fee-paying school would seem daunting. In this situation, policymakers would turn to economists for insight.

An orthodox economic analysis would consider the price of education as the main driver of consumption, suggesting that a lower price leads to an increase in demand. It would then discuss the utility, a kind of ephemeral feeling of internalised value, that consumption brings to those who consume.

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Across Scotland, despite increasing prices Scotland’s independent schools’ average annual fees for day attendance are around £15,000, more than half the median average earnings of £27,710, and the number of kids in the private sector has remained consistent for decades.

So the neoclassical idea that a higher price should lower demand doesn’t fit the evidence. Something is encouraging parents to consume private education at a higher than average rate in Edinburgh, and it is not price.

Perhaps then it is value.

In orthodox theory, we measure the value of something by considering its price. We, therefore, know that fee-paying schools provide value because their prices are high. This is a taut