Public school tie still dominates in top jobs


The UK’s top professions are still disproportionately populated by alumni of independent schools, according to the education charity the Sutton Trust, which has been tracking the educational backgrounds of Britain’s elites for over 10 years.


The trust’s report, Leading people 2016, charts the educational backgrounds of leading figures in 10 areas: the military, medicine, politics, civil service, journalism, business, law, music, film and Nobel Prizes. 


Three-quarters (74%) of the country’s top judges — High Court and Appeals Court — attended independent schools, while on the military side seven out of 10 (71%) of the top officers in the country — two-star generals and above — went to independent schools.


In journalism, over half (51%) of leading print journalists were educated privately and less than one in five went to comprehensives which educate 88% of the population today.


State school students are slightly better represented in medicine: of a sample of the country’s top doctors, 61% were educated at independent schools, nearly one quarter at grammar schools (22%) and the remainder (16%) at comprehensives.


In business, a high proportion of FTSE 100 chief executives attended schools overseas, but of those who were UK educated, about a third (34%) went to private schools. In politics, nearly a third (32%) of MPs were privately educated. Half of the Conservative government's cabinet were privately educated, compared with 13% of the shadow cabinet.


www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Leading-People_Feb16.pdf