Educational experts in Britain Educational experts in Britain have said that families facing financial difficulties are finding it challenging to send their children to expensive private schools.  Against a bleak economic background , fee-charging schools have seen a decline in applications from British applicants. The news comes a day after the Office of National Statistics confirmed Britain had entered a double-dip recession. 
A recently published census by the Independant Schools Councik (ISC) also shows that fees for private schools rose by 4.5 percent last year.
However the ISC said that this was the second lowest rise since 1994, and across its schools the amount of financial assistance provided to families was rising. A third of ISC pupils receive help with their fees.
Although parents are clearly still intent on getting their children into private schools, British pupils numbers have dropped by 0.1 percent. As a result, schools charging fees are recruiting rising numbers of pupils from overseas as the proportion of British students stalls.
This latest ISC census also revealed s a 5.8 percent increase in the proportion of non-British pupils at its member schools.
It shows that in the 1,209 schools that took part in the census this year and last, there are now 25,940 non-British pupils with parents living overseas, compared to 24,529 the year before - an increase of 5.8 percent.
In these same schools, the numbers of British pupils fell to 479,009 from 479,695 in 2011 - a drop of 0.1 percent.
In the past five years, the biggest growth in overseas pupils has come from Russia, Spain, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and China, the census says.
The highest numbers of non-British pupils, who have parents living overseas, come from Hong Kong, followed by China and Germany.
The Council said that the rise in non-British pupils, and a reported increase by 27 percent of schools in the numbers of their students going to university overseas \"highlight the attraction of an education at an ISC school to a global market\".
In England, ISC schools have a higher proportion of minority ethic pupils than state schools (26.1 percent compared with 24.5 percent), the census claims.