The Public Schools Act 1868 was legislation passed by the UK Parliament to regulate the nine major UK boys' schools. These schools educated the majority of the sons of the British upper class.

It was based on the report of the Clarendon Commission, a Royal Commission on Public Schools which sat from 1861 to 1864, and investigated conditions and abuses which had grown up over the centuries at nine, great, nominally charitable schools:

• Charterhouse School
• Eton College
• Harrow School
• Merchant Taylors' School
• Rugby School
• Shrewsbury School
• St Paul's School
• Westminster School
• Winchester College

The Act removed the schools from any direct responsibility of the government, granting them their independence and instating a board of governors for each, and led to the relaxation of the curriculum, from the previously-mandated, wholly Classics-based one, to a broader academic span. The Act having given the description of "Public school'' to a few exclusive and distinguished institutions, many lesser schools hurried to associate themselves by adopting the term, which remains in common use in England to describe independent senior schools.

The act was revised and slightly modified in 1998.

Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom | Education in the United Kingdom | 1868 in law | History of the United Kingdom