Is it time to legislate against class-based discrimination?

Cambridge University says the proportion of state school pupils attending the elite institution is rising, but 32 per cent still went to private schools against 7 per cent of the population as a whole. The TUC has, meanwhile, called for new laws to outlaw discrimination on the basis of social class, James Moore writes

An engine of inequality? Cambridge University says the proportion of state school pupils attending the institution has increased (Rex)

Ambitions of landing a top job in business, politics, the law, the civil service? An Oxbridge degree will confer a significant advantage upon you.

Surely, then, those supporting greater social mobility should be pleased with the latest data on its students published by Cambridge University.

The institution has hailed provisional figures showing 68 per cent of those attending this year were educated at a state school, while about one in four come from a “deprived” background, although how that is measured is fairly complex. It places a lot of reliance upon postcode.

This year’s percentage of state school students compares with 65.3 per cent last year.

Because it covers the entire student population, it implies this year’s intake will also have been somewhat higher than 68 per cent.

Progress, then. But is it as good as it looks? Not when one considers that only about 7 per cent of the wider population are educated at independent schools. It goes without saying that to get into one of them you have to have unusually wealthy parents, with the exception of a small number of pupils on scholarship.

Independent schools act as both agents of inequality and bulwarks against social mobility.

Cambridge says it is working hard to improve the diversity of its students. But the fact that nearly a third of them come from a privileged 7 per cent of the country’s schoolchildren shows it is still serving to reinforce those bulwarks.

The Sutton Trust, which champions social mobility, does speak well of some of its efforts (the two organisations have been working together) but they are at best chipping away at the problem when, really, those bulwarks need tearing down.

The trust’s figures demonstrate a clear need for further action. Business, politics, the media, the civil service; all have a disproportionate number of privately educated individuals in their senior echelons.

Some 65 per cent of senior judges went to independent schools, 59 per pent of civil service permanent secretaries did the same, as did 57 per cent of the House of Lords, 57 per cent of the Sunday Times Rich List and 48 per cent of FTSE 350 CEOs (excluding those educated internationally). Some 15 and 14 per cent of the latter two, respectively, had been to Oxbridge compared to less than 1 per cent of the population overall.

You will often hear corporate kingpins claim business is a meritocracy. Those figures suggest otherwise.

Compare them with, say, football, where the right school tie or university colours won’t get you very far if you can’t perform on the pitch. Just 5 per cent of male and 2 per cent of female professionals attended independent schools.

The contrast with Britain’s dismal current cabinet is similarly stark. The trust’s figures show 39 per cent of its ministers went to private school. For the shadow cabinet the figure is 9 per cent.

There is a certain symmetry with the Cambridge figures being released on the same day the TUC called for the government to legislate against class-based discrimination.

The trade unions body wants to make class a protected characteristic along with race, gender, sexuality and disability, and to have discrimination based on it made illegal.

Its proposals also include giving public bodies a legal duty to tackle inequality and requiring companies to report their class pay gaps alongside their gender pay gaps.

The problem with affording protected status to a characteristic is that the legal protections that come with it don’t always work so well in practice. The disability employment gap, for example, has barely moved in more than a decade. As someone in that group, who writes about disability, I regularly hear stories from people who are treated appallingly at their workplaces.

But the TUC’s proposals are nonetheless worth considering. They might serve to help kick-start progress on the issue.

It will, however, almost certainly require a change of government for anything to happen. The current cabinet of privileged millionaires seems more intent on widening divisions than healing them.