Despite increasing corporate efforts to hire from more diverse backgrounds, private school alumni remain dominant among the most powerful positions in British society, according to a sprawling new report on social mobility in the United Kingdom.
New data from social mobility charity the Sutton Trust show that elite schooling remains the surest route to the top of British society, a reflection that corporate efforts to improve socioeconomic mobility at companies have only made little headway.
Efforts include expanding apprenticeship programs without degree requirements, switching from filtering candidates by national exam results to looking at their performance relative to their school average, and collecting data on what share of top ranks come from working-class backgrounds.
Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have aimed to correct historic imbalances that left ethnic-minority and lower-socioeconomic workers underrepresented. Yet among those schooled in the UK, people in the most influential roles, from senior judges and government officials to newspaper columnists and CEOs, are still five times more likely to have attended private school than the average Briton, the Sutton Trust finds.
There are signs that that socio-economic mobility has improved since 2019, when the Sutton Trust last conducted a similar analysis. The share of bosses running the UK’s top 100 companies who attended fee-paying private schools declined to 18%, while for entrepreneurs, defined by the Sutton Trust as founders of privately owned startups valued above $1 billion, the figure is 27%, the report shows.
Politics has shifted too; last year’s switch from a Conservative to a Labour government last year ushered in a cabinet — the Prime Minister’s top team — where about 7% went to private school, down from almost 39% seven years ago.
Yet progress isn’t uniform. In some fields, such as FTSE 100 chairs or newspaper columnists, the balance has actually tipped further in the favor of privately-schooled individuals, the review shows.
For the vast majority of Britons, who are state-educated, reaching the top-earning echelons of business, finance and government remains an uphill climb. Research published in June found that graduates from working class backgrounds, though well represented in job applications for professional jobs, are 32% less likely to receive an offer compared to peers from a professional background.
It also found that applicants who studied at private school were more likely to be hired compared to those from state schools. Oxford and Cambridge graduates — disproportionately privately educated — are also more likely to land a role the best-paid or most-influential roles, according to the Sutton Trust’s analysis. To be sure, student bodies at Oxford and Cambridge have become more diverse. State-school students now make up a majority of those admitted at both universities.
“In light of recent pushback against the diversity agenda, it is vital that class is put at the heart of diversity and inclusion,” the report’s authors warn. Many firms operating in the US, such as Accenture Plc and PepsiCo Inc, have pared back or canceled diversity and inclusion initiatives after US Donald Trump signed executive orders demanding the end of what he calls “wasteful” and “illegal” DEI. This US-led backlash has had reverberations across the Atlantic, with a number of UK companies, such as BT Group Plc, cutting back on some diversity initiatives.
While much of that pushback has focused on gender, sexual orientation and race rather than family background, it’s still creating hurdles for UK organizations that want to take into account the socio-economic background of their employees when deciding how to hire and promote.
“If you are either headquartered in the US or maybe your capital is raised in the US, there’s definitely greater nervousness,” Jenny Baskerville, chief executive of the Bridge Group and former head of inclusion, diversity and equity at KPMG UK, said in a phone interview. “I still think there’s a push amongst some of the big employers to show that this is important. My bigger worry is whether there’s potentially a lack of investment or indeed that people are just more nervous to talk about it.”
The findings echo a 2024 analysis by Progress Together, a nonprofit that looks to boost social mobility in Britain’s finance sector. Its analysis showed that that half of those working in financial services come from higher-socio economic backgrounds, with that proportion increasing for the top positions.
Some sectors have increased efforts, Baskerville said, citing examples such as Morgan Stanley, which made social mobility a board-level priority, as well as Baskerville’s former employer KMPG, who has a program to help middle management staff from lower socio-economic backgrounds progress in their careers. Other sectors, such as tech and the creative industries are still lagging behind, the report shows.
The Sutton Trust report said the government should require all companies with over 250 employees to report on the socioeconomic background of their staff and publish pay gaps, in a similar pledge the government has made to tackle the ethnicity and disability pay gap at companies. It also recommended that employers share best practices, collaborate with universities and community organizations to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds transition into the workplace, and tackle differences in retention and promotion rates between workers from different backgrounds.
YouGov polling conducted for the Sutton Trust revealed that measuring the socio-economic background of workers still remains a niche practice in the UK. Fewer than 10% of employers ask their staff if they were eligible for free-school meals, and 15% collected data on their parents’ professions or class backgrounds.
“Most employers aren’t building a talent pipeline of young people from less advantaged backgrounds,” said Carl Cullinane, Director of Research and Policy at the Sutton Trust. “And while there have been efforts to make business more inclusive, work on social mobility is patchy, and too often, social class is not included in the diversity conversation. This means they’re potentially limiting their talent pool.”
Photograph: Pupils put their hands in the air to answer a question during a lesson at a grammar school in Maidstone, UK. Photo credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
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