Learning the hard way

The opposition Labour Party, which champions equality in education, has long struggled with the notion of private schooling. Its politicians often attack the Eton toffs of the ruling Conservatives in Parliament because of their privileged background. But some Labour cabinet ministers in the past have put their children before party conviction and sent their kids to private schools. Labour’s current education spokesman, Tristram Hunt, says that private school is an option for his children. All of this does not help heal Labour’s old wounds over class.

Those wounds will not be salved by new research published today by the Sutton Trust, a foundation promoting social mobility. The striking figure in its examination of educational backgrounds of prospective parliamentary candidates at the forthcoming election reveals that Labour hopefuls are nearly twice as likely to have gone to a private school than the party’s current members of Parliament (see chart 2). That has left the party red faced. The repeated trumpeting by Ed Miliband, its leader, of his days as a pupil at a comprehensive school to boost his ordinary-guy image suddenly seems rather hollow.

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