Oxbridge and private schools still hold sway

Top executives and politicians are five times more likely to have been privately educated than the general population, says a recent study by the Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility Commission.


The report, Elitist Britain, examines the backgrounds of around 5,000 individuals in high-ranking positions. It recommends that employers gather data on the socio-economic backgrounds of their staff, in the same way they do for gender and ethnicity. The data should include parental qualifications and occupation, type of school attended and eligibility for free school meals.


Overall, the report paints a picture of power structures that remain dominated by a narrow section of the population: the 7% who attend independent schools, and the roughly 1% who graduate from Oxford and Cambridge.


Two-fifths (39%) of the elite group as a whole were privately educated — more than five times as many as the population at large — while a quarter (24%) had graduated from Oxbridge.


Politics, the media, and public service all show high proportions of the privately educated, including 65% of senior judges, 59% of civil service permanent secretaries and 57% of the House of Lords.


As well as recommending monitoring of socio-economic background, the report suggests enacting the “socio-economic duty” clause of the Equality Act 2010 and obligating public bodies to give due regard to how they can reduce the impact of socio-economic disadvantage.

https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/elitist-britain-2019