Report Overview
We’ve analysed the education backgrounds of Rishi Sunak’s new cabinet. The majority were privately educated, with 63% attending an independent school.
63%
The proportion of the new cabinet who were privately educated.
53%
The proportion who attended Oxbridge.
41%
The proportion of cabinet ministers who went to both an independent school and Oxbridge.
Key Findings
- 63% of the cabinet were educated at fee-paying schools, while 19% went to a comprehensive and 16% attended a grammar school. They are nine times more likely to have gone to an independent school than the general population (roughly 7%).
- The proportion of alumni of independent schools is higher than Rishi Sunak’s previous cabinet (63% vs 61%). It is lower than Liz Truss’s cabinet (68%), but similar to Boris Johnson’s first cabinet (64%). It is more than twice that of Theresa May’s 2016 cabinet (30%), and more than Cameron’s 2015 cabinet (50%).
- The proportion of cabinet ministers educated at comprehensive schools is the same as Liz Truss’s cabinet at 19%, but lower than Boris Johnson’s first cabinet (27%).
- The Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary were all educated at independent schools.
- 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.
- Of the 32 ministers attending Sunak’s new cabinet, over half (53%) went to Oxford or Cambridge.
- 41% of the new cabinet went from fee-paying schools to Oxbridge.