‘Why does Prince George have to go to Eton? He just needs to cut tape'
Lewis Goodall explains why he believes there’s little justification for Prince George studying at Eton College, when he will follow his family into the Royal business.
Listen to this article
What’s the story?
Prince George is off to Eton. The son of the Prince of Wales will head to the £63,000 a year school his father also attended from September this year.
The private Windsor school is also where 20 British prime ministers have studied, and where the young prince will study among other offspring of the UK's wealthy and elite.
It's not an unexpected decision for the Windsors, but it doesn't suggest the Royal Family is planning to modernise how it operates, Lewis Goodall says.
Great to see another firmly modernising move from the Royal Family pic.twitter.com/BsNtw94Fmk
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) June 16, 2026
Lewis argued that many UK state schools are "fantastic", and that it might serve the potential future king to have a similar education to his subjects.
"If they’re not good enough - make them better," he added.
Lewis faced backlash on social media from people who suggested the Prince shouldn’t attend a state school.
“The main thing that I took away from it was the extraordinary number of people who seemed to be absolutely furious at my suggestion that our future head of state might want to go to a state school, and that that would be completely and utterly disgusting and ridiculous,” Lewis says.
Some believe, he adds, that King Charles is a "modernising force" for the Royal Family – but he says the choice of Prince George's schooling suggests very little has changed under his rule.
‘We already know what Prince George’s job is going to be’
There was also criticism for Lewis’s own education, having been accepted to, and studied at, Oxford University.
He argues that getting into Oxford is a success that does require "a little bit of merit", which is very different to heading off to one because your parents have stumped up 60k.
Lewis suggests Marlborough College, where Prince Catherine studied, could have been a suitable alternative, although boarding fees there are over £64,000.
He also questions whether he needs to go to school at all.
"We already know what his job's going to be," Lewis adds.
"He just needs to cut tape, doesn't he?"