Ahead of Andrew Neil's documentary on social mobility tonight, Matt Gwilliam looks at the high number of public schooled politicians – including in the Shadow Cabinet.
Tonight, at 9:00 on BBC Two, Andrew Neil presents an eye-opening documentary, Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain, in which he “seeks to find out why politicians from all parties appear to be drawn from an ever smaller social pool – and why it matters to us all”; here, Matt Gwilliam looks at the high number of public schooled politicians – including in the Labour Shadow Cabinet
Last week saw the departure of Alan Johnson from front line politics. His departure is a great loss; he was a formidable politician and in addition, his personal background gave the Cabinet and more recently Shadow Cabinet real credibility with the wider public that increasingly sees politicians as having come from a distinct background.
Recently, the Fabians’ Sunder Katwala proposed a 20 per cent tax on private school tuition fees to fund a real pupil premium for state schools, a compelling and eloquent argument that reminds us that equality of education is at the very core of who Labour are as a party.
Few people would disagree that private education confers privileges and advantage to those who enjoy it, and that going to private school is almost exclusively linked to the accident of birth. However, many argue that private schools are what parents aspire to for their kids and penalising aspiration is not an option – but can the Labour party seize the initiative about schooling in a different way?
In the Shadow Cabinet elections there were calls to have quotas, guaranteeing a third or half of the shadow cabinet must be made up of women. Doing this would overcome any discrimination and force a change in culture. Similar arguments are used for all women shortlists (AWS), which appear to have been a great success at getting more women into parliament.
When it transpired that »40 per cent of the shadow team were women, some thought a quota still important to send the message that the party are serious and never complacent about equality. Perhaps even the debate about quotas before the shadow elections assisted in getting more women elected.
The government’s cabinet is less than 20% female. It is also 59% privately educated – eight-and-a-half times that of the general population (7% privately schooled), a huge overrepresentation. Should the Labour party be once again leading the way, by talking about a cap on the number of privately educated members of the Shadow Cabinet?
When this idea was floated to an MP who was a champion of AWS and positive discrimination for women, the reply came “where do you stop?”, an argument deployed against AWS. The question should really be: “Where do you start?” The starting point should surely be the least represented sections of society with the greatest biases against them.
Men are overrepresented, while non-white members are marginally underrepresented, with private schooling overrepresented in the Labour Shadow Cabinet by around 400 per cent. It would appear that schooling is a massive factor governing outcomes, even in the Labour party.
Though Labour does much better than the Tories it should be more reflective about this bias that attacks the most fundamental of the party’s beliefs about equality of opportunity for all through equality of education. This is particularly important during the reign of Messieurs Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, a fact senior Conservative backbencher David Davis remarked upon this week.
He observed that there is no one at the top of the government “from backgrounds where they had to scrape for the last penny at the end of the week”, adding:
“They don’t have a sense of what a large part of the country, the poorer part of the country, what their views and priorities are.”
A point also made by Dominic Sandbrook in today’s Mail:
“… very few senior Tories come from a relatively poor background. And when ordinary families, already feeling the pinch as the economy slides back towards recession, are confronted with pictures of George Osborne on the Klosters ski slopes, they could be forgiven for wondering whether we really are all in this together.
“Although our politicians often refuse to admit it, the truth is that the state of Westminster is a damning indictment of the death of social mobility…
“For all their gushing rhetoric about change and inclusiveness, MPs of all parties tend to look remarkably similar. And for all their talk about diversity, it is worth noting that a pitiful 11 out of 306 Tory MPs are black or Asian, while Labour boasts just 16 and the Lib Dems none at all.
“The figures on education are even more revealing. Of our 119 Government ministers, 66 per cent went to public schools, compared with only 7 per cent of the population as a whole. And what is more, a staggering 10 per cent went to just one school, Eton.”
The Labour party has worked hard to push up the number of women and non-white members in positions of authority and profile, and though there is still plenty of work to be done, both the members who have filled these positions and the party itself deserve praise. They are role models of which we should be proud.
However, along with this process the party must examine what it is and what equality really means. At our heart, do we not stand fundamentally opposed to privileges or disadvantages endowed by the accident of birth? The ability to attend a private school is one such privilege and given the bias exhibited in the Labour party, members should be concerned and sending a message about it.
The overrepresentation of high profile, privately schooled Labour Members of Parliament sends a message to the party, to kids going to private schools and to kids going to state schools about where they stand in society. It also sends a message to the wider public about who Labour is and who is chosen to represent the party. A discussion about a limit on the overrepresentation of privately educated members in the shadow cabinet, for example, would show the party to be serious and sincere about its values and the vision is has of society.
The issue of schooling is fundamental to who we are as a political movement. Perhaps we should be tackling it with the same self-inspection, vigour and energy that we have tackled other issues of prejudice and injustice.
41 Responses to “Private schooling goes right to the heart of who we are”
Matt Gwilliam
correction: *and there experience and this article proposes nothing against private schools.
Sarah Hayward
The issue of private education is difficult to unpick so simplistically. And as a number of commentors point out there’s vast difference in types and costs of education involved. The vast majority of families even well off, professional middle classes couldn’t afford the £30k per year (without any extras) fees for Eton. After taxes it equates to over 50k of salary for a single child. Only 6% of the population earns even the 50K never mind the fact that you’ll need to earn more than that to cover your own living costs.
As I wrote on my own blog, I think this is as much to do with money and financial advantage. Of which education is a symptom.
Given that we’re probably not going to ban private education we’re actaully asking the wrong question. It’s how we help, bright able people from poorer backgrounds to get on, not how we stop people from private schools. Because if we do the former…….
Rob-D
Interesting debate. Few points I’d like to throw in:
1) Positive discrimination can be a benefit if there is a group that is generally denied access to position/status/upward mobility across all levels of society. Women, non-whites, homosexuals etc have all experienced systemic discrimination in this country and it may be useful to combat that by bringing representatives from that group into government. Education at a state school does not produce the same system-wide level of discrimination and so may not need to be addressed in the same way.
2) Some parents do scrimp and save in order to send their children to public school. They should be revered for their self-sacrifice. I would be interested to know, of those privately educated MPs in parliament, how many went to ‘middling’ public schools and how many went to ‘top’ ones. Also, how many had parents who could easily afford those school fees? The true ‘elite’ are not merely privately-educated but more likely, from affluent families that can easily afford the best public schools. Can you say we want quotas against those who went to a select group of the best schools AND had the money to easily afford it?
3) What benefit would positive discrimination provide here? Would it provide role models that would inspire young working class, state educated folk into politics? Would we be likely to see high-school dropouts represented in government? Or would the quota be filled by those that did well at school, had sharp elbowed parents and have nothing in common with the council classes?
So, if I was to sum up my points: is there a need to promote state educated people? is the true divide those that are privately educated and those that aren’t or is it those that have affluent backgrounds and those that don’t? what would quotas achieve – reduced discrimination, better government or popular with the working classes?
Rob-D
Sarah: you’ve summed up my point about the ‘true divide’ much better than I could have. Shame I took so long writing my post and didn’t see yours until after I’d submitted.
Debsalini
Matt,
Sorry my tone wasn’t clear. I am not entirely against the idea of adjusting the representation of public/state-school-educated MPs. I was privately educated myself and I know first hand how difficult it has been to reconnect with the real world afterwards.
And I am totally serious about wishing to exclude from standing as Labour PPCs those who send their own children to private school: if we want to break the cycle of privilege, we must do so by example.