Alun Ebenezer: Tomorrow’s leaders must come from outside gilded cage of fee-paying schools

As recently reported, top fee-paying schools may be pricing themselves beyond the reach of their traditional core of middle class professionals, but there’s something they promise that parents keep paying for.

Is it the prospect of following the school’s alumni into glittering careers in law, politics, business, the arts or the army? And if so, is this something where the new breed of independent schools – free schools – can give their fee-paying counterparts a run for their money?

As shown by the Sutton Trust, the chance of reaching the top in these professions is still very much greater if you went to an ‘independent’ school. But while it may still be conventional wisdom in 2016 that top fee-paying schools set you up for ‘top jobs’, what if we fast forward to 2026, when today’s secondary school children are starting to compete for those top jobs?

What skills will they need to succeed and how well equipped are the the traditional fee paying independent schools to nurture these?

According to the Sutton Trust: “As well as academic achievement, an independent education tends to develop essential skills such as confidence, articulacy and team work which are vital to career success”.

Read his full article here