The Education Secretary gave a very pugnacious speech this morning on the need to improve the country’s state schools. ‘It is remarkable,’ Michael Gove said at independent school Brighton College, ‘how many of the positions of wealth, influence, celebrity and power in our society are held by individuals who were privately educated’. He cited the various professions — politics, law, medicine — where private schools are ‘handsomely represented’.
That’s certainly not a new observation. Gove could have, if he’d wanted to, cited the Sutton Trust’s statistics (below) showing the proportion of judges, Lords and CEOs who come
from independent schools. Instead, he chose a more novel — and effective — way of making his point: reeling off the names of famous examples from film stars to
journalists:
‘Hugh Laurie, Dominic West, Damian Lewis, Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Redmayne: all old Etonians.
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