Sutton Trust Cabinet Analysis 2020

Almost two-thirds (65%) of Boris Johnson’s cabinet received a private education.
A quarter (27%) went to a comprehensive and 8% attended a grammar school.
This proportion of alumni of independent schools attending cabinet is similar to Johnson’s previous cabinet (64%). However it is more than twice that of Theresa May’s 2016 cabinet (30%), slightly more than Cameron’s 2015 cabinet (50%) and the same as the 2010 coalition cabinet (62%).
The proportion of independently educated ministers attending Cabinet is less than earlier cabinets under Conservative Prime Ministers, John Major (71% in 1992) and Margaret Thatcher (91% in 1979). Tony Blair and Gordon Brown both had 32% of those attending cabinet privately educated, while 25% of Clement Attlee’s first cabinet had been privately educated.
Members of the cabinet are over nine times more likely to have gone to an independent school than the general population.
Of the 26 ministers attending Boris Johnson’s new cabinet, half (50%) went to Oxford or Cambridge universities. This compares with 27% of all Conservative MPs, 18% of Labour MPs and 24% of all MPs.
A further 8% of Johnson’s cabinet were educated at other Russell Group universities (excluding Oxbridge).
31% of the new cabinet went through a ‘pipeline’ from fee-paying schools to Oxbridge.

Related Research