Lessons in democracy

How to make our private schools open to all

To look at David Cameron’s Cabinet is to see that Britain has a deep problem with social mobility. As in the Cabinet, the privately-educated are disproportionately represented in every sphere of British life, from politics to pop music. Almost three-quarters of high court judges, more than half of leading news journalists and a third of our MPs were educated at independent schools, which educated just 7 per cent of pupils. What is relatively new to Britain is that these elite independent schools should be the preserve of the rich.

A sprinkling of bursaries and scholarships (not means tested) exist to these schools but they make very little difference. It will take many years to discover whether Michael Gove’s expansion of free schools and academies will work and, if it does, a generation to complete. We need to look for more immediate solutions. My organisation, the Sutton Trust, has a proposal which would get tens of thousands of bright children from non-privileged backgrounds into the best independent schools and start a new golden age of social mobility. It just requires a bit of political courage.

Research conducted by the Sutton Trust showed that through the direct grant scheme and other local schemes 70 per cent of private day schools were mainly state-funded up until 1976. Oxbridge in those days attracted talented youngsters from all backgrounds with two-thirds from state funded schools compared to just over half today. Today just five top independent schools achieve as many entrants to Oxbridge as almost 2000 state schools — well over half the state secondary schools in the country. The old system, state funded pupils in independent schools, was the nearest Britain ever got to being a genuinely mobile society.