Discriminate against Etonians, employers urged

Richard Vaughan cites Justine Greening’s speech at the Carnegie-Sutton Trust ‘Best in Class 2018 Summit’ in an article for The i.

Employers should give preferential treatment to a candidate from an under-performing school over a former student from an elite public school, such as Eton, Justine Greening has said.

The former Education Secretary called on businesses to do more to boost social mobility by using “contextual recruitment”, which looks beyond a person’s academic results. Ms Greening suggested that a job candidate from a more challenging background with the same grades as one from a wealthy background would be more “impressive”.

Speaking this month at a summit on social mobility organised by the Sutton Trust in New York, Ms Greening said: “Contextual recruitment basically says when you’re looking at someone’s grades who’s applied for a job to you, look at in the context of the school they went to. “You can easily do this, there’s software to help you as a company.

“So if you get three Bs from Eton, you’re probably not as impressive as somebody who gets three Bs from the school in a part of the country where the school [wasn’t] doing well.”

Get the story or watch Justine Greening’s entire keynote.