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.