The Sutton Trust’s recent report – on the privately-educated dominating prestigious jobs by a scale of five to one – is an important read. The study highlights how critical an independent school education was twenty years ago, especially for those now at the top of their chosen career paths.
This isn’t, however, particularly surprising. Back then, education in this country was in a rut; a tired out, laurel-resting, old boys’ club at one end of the spectrum; and the dregs of a union-dominated, ‘bog-standard comprehensive’ state sector at the other. Both ends of the spectrum were equally complacent, equally dominated by the past, equally lazy in their approach and equally unwilling or unable to contemplate change or improvement.
The revolution in education started by Andrew Adonis and then taken forward by Michael Gove has succeeded in changing all that. But not enough. It is a disgrace that in our country, one of the most advanced in the world, if your parents did not go to university there is an 80 per cent chance you will never go yourself.
But thanks to the shake-up of the education system over the past twenty years, there is a new cohort of state schools supporting children who past generations would have left behind.
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