A new report by the Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility Commission has found that a tiny cohort of privately educated people, many of whom went to Oxbridge, continue to hold the top jobs in the country. The people holding those top jobs, in politics, the media, the judiciary and business, are five times more likely to have been to private school than the general population.
It is not surprising, though it is depressing. I have often lamented the deference that so many of us still seem to feel towards those who embody this well-established pipeline from prep to parliament, who walk the walk and talk the talk of the old aristocratic elite – Boris Johnson’s continued rise, despite little evidence of talent or integrity, being the most pertinent recent example. There seems to be more than a little bit of Downton-ish forelock-tugging, “they were good to us up at the big house”, feeling of residual inferiority about it. Why the continued respect where there should be scorn and suspicion for those who buy themselves advantages in life and then coast through, seemingly answerable to no one?
Well, I don’t respect it. I’m polite about it, as you can’t blame an individual child for the circumstances of his or her birth whether rich or poor, but I won’t pretend I think any of those privately educated people who dominate Britain are better than you or me (because the chances are you went to state school, too. Most of us did, after all). I’m always going to be more impressed by a kid from a council estate and a struggling comprehensive who gets four As at A-level than I am by someone with the same grades who has been spoon-fed Latin their whole education before being shepherded to repeated Oxbridge interview roleplay sessions.
The question is: why aren’t Oxbridge interviewers impressed by this? Oxford and Cambridge are improving their intake, but progress is slow, and despite the laughable fears of some independent schools that their pupils are being discriminated against, not enough is being done. In 2018 the Sutton Trust accused Oxford and Cambridge of being so socially exclusive that they recruited more students from eight top schools than almost 3,000 other UK state schools put together. That’s simply unjustifiable. Furthermore, it’s a plucky state school child that would stride willingly and confidently into such an environment.
Yet the off-putting aspects of a group – whether at university or in the world of work – dominated by private school pupils is never talked about. Our continued delusion that we live in a meritocracy masks any dissenting view. Could it not be argued that a dominance of private school and Oxbridge workers is likely to block innovation, creativity and vision in many industries? That it perpetuates a sort of parochial, small-c, conservativeness – a dullness. It’s so boring. People will hire in their own image, and then they all have dinner parties with each other, have the same in-jokes. It’s cliquey and exclusive, overwhelmingly white, rife with nepotism, profoundly uncool and unexciting.
The social confidence afforded to the privately educated is always cited but never challenged, despite Hugh Grant forging an entire early acting career from a posh, bumbling inability to talk to women. Is it really acceptable to recruit so many men from single-sex boarding schools who struggle to look women in the eye? (The same problem exists in reverse too, of course, though fewer of these women will be in managerial positions). Any state-educated woman in a top industry will recognise this. At first it’s amusing, then baffling, then infuriating. It undoubtedly halts women’s progress in the workplace.
I’ll be attacked for this, as I always am when I write about our revolting, outdated class system. Nevertheless, recruiters need to open their eyes to the potential downsides of candidates who are privately educated, and instead of looking at a woman’s date of birth or a person of colour’s surname and, despite it being illegal, tossing that CV into the wastepaper basket. “Oof,” they could say, “went to Eton. Might be a bit unimaginative, probably not very good at managing teams with women working on them, could be a bit blinkered by privilege.”
This is not to say that privately educated Oxbridge graduates are bad people or don’t have anything good to bring to the table – just that perhaps we need to stop focusing so much on what’s fair and instead look at what’s most interesting and imaginative. I have a friend who worked for an organisation that claimed to be at the cutting edge of culture, philosophy and ideas. They wouldn’t look at a CV unless it had an Oxbridge college on it. I’m sure there were some excellent candidates, but let’s not pretend that anything particularly transgressive or exciting is going to emerge as a result of such hiring policies.
Companies and organisations need to be more transparent about their hiring policies. Just as we had a gender pay gap audit, so should we have a class audit. It could take into account multiple factors to account for the full picture of class today. All companies should have to publish the results. They should do more outreach, too, so that students feel that they are wanted, regardless of a disadvantaged, or even normal, background. More mentoring schemes would also be beneficial, more affordable training, too. And, as always, more opportunities outside of London.
There are practical steps that can be taken, but the more psychological shift of facing up to the fact that a private school education doesn’t always make a better candidate is something that I fear will take many generations to unpick.
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
