Access to the top

Justin Madders MP, Chair of the Social Mobility APPG, Co-Chair Baroness Tyler, and Flick Drummond MP, discuss their prospective inquiry with the Sutton Trust into access into leading professions

We know from the Sutton Trust’s research that almost a third of MPs in the House of Commons are privately educated, about half of the Cabinet, and, at the last count, two thirds of members of the House of Lords went to independent school too. As respective members of both houses of parliament, we are fortunate to count ourselves as part of an influential and historic institution, yet it is one in which people from disadvantaged backgrounds are underrepresented and too rarely get the opportunity to enter parliament.

This is why, as the Chair and Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Social Mobility, we have partnered with the Sutton Trust – which now provides the group’s secretariat – to launch an inquiry into Access into Leading Professions. We know all too well that privilege expedites access into a range of top professions, given our previous careers have been spent in law (Justin Madders), a director of a unit in the civil service (Baroness Tyler), financial services and armed forces (Flick Drummond) – professions that are arguably even more exclusive at the top than politics!

Together with the Sutton Trust, the APPG on Social Mobility will investigate how to improve access for people from disadvantaged backgrounds into the leading professions, such as law, finance, medicine, journalism and politics. APPGs are cross-party groups of MPs and Peers that can explore issues in depth and draw their attention to parliamentarians. During the last parliament, the APPG on Social Mobility pioneered influential work into character development and early years, culminating with the Character and Resilience Manifesto. This parliament we will look into social mobility at the other end of scale, through an inquiry focusing on the best practices to widen access into top jobs.

The Sutton Trust’s report, Leading People 2016 – published last week – shows that the UK’s top professions remain disproportionately populated by alumni of private schools and Oxbridge, despite these educating only a small minority of the population. For instance, of all High Court and Appeals Court judges, nearly three quarters attended private schools, as did over half of the top 100 news journalists and a third of FTSE 100 CEOs that were educated in the UK. This is on top of distortions  previously highlighted by the Sutton Trust in politics, law and finance. This compares to the whole population, of which about 7% attended private schools.

Over recent years, we’ve seen a greater focus on diversity in the professions. There has been improvement in the number of women appointed to boards at FTSE 100 companies, for example. The Coalition Government set up a Social Mobility Business Compact to encourage employers to be more open to people from BME and disadvantaged backgrounds. Recently the Civil Service announced it was reforming its recruitment process to encourage diversity and many major companies have changed their admissions process and set up programmes aiming to widen access.

Yet research that the Sutton Trust published in partnership with Upreach last year found that, three and a half years after graduation, private school graduates in top jobs earn £4,500 more than their state school counterparts. Half of this pay difference can be explained by the type of higher education institution attended or prior academic achievement, but half cannot. Privately educated graduates are out-earning state school graduates with similar qualifications. This shows that access into top professions goes beyond educational achievement. Our inquiry will ask why this is the case, what the professions are doing to address this problem and what is working.

The Sutton Trust’s transformative Pathways programmes are one such solution to this problem. The APPG’s inquiry will hear from leaders across the UK’s elite professions to investigate what else is working, identify the best and worst practices, and deliver a plan for what government and the professions can do to ensure equality of opportunity for all.

Justin Madders is the Labour Member of Parliament for Ellesmere Port and Neston and previously worked in employment law. Baroness Claire Tyler of Enfield, is a Liberal Democrat Peer, the Chair of CAFCASS (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and the President of the National Children’s Bureau. Flick Drummond is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Portsmouth South, used to work as an insurance broker and was a member of the TA Intelligence Corps.

 

For further details about the APPG and the inquiry please contact:

Javneet Ghuman, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Officer, The Sutton Trust

T:  020 7802 0620

E: [email protected]

The session on the 22nd March will focus on access into law, finance and professional services.