The government has launched a strategy to end the culture of privilege that sees former independent school pupils dominating the top jobs in the judiciary and boardroom to the exclusion of people from less affluent backgrounds, it emerged today.

Launching the new strategy Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers, the government said that a ‘stark fact’ of social mobility was that only 7% of the UK population attended independent schools, and yet this section of the population accounted for 70% of all high court judges and 54% of all FTSE 100 chief executives.

The BBC website further reports that 68% of top barristers also came from this privileged 7% of the country’s population.

Other statistics cited by the government include: just one in five young people from the poorest families achieve five good GCSEs compared to three quarters from richer families; and only a quarter of working class boys go on to get middle class jobs.

The new strategy aims to end this inequality by ensuring that everyone has a fair opportunity to fulfil their potential, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, the government said. Unfairness will be tackled at every stage of life, from school through to adulthood, it asserted.

City firm Allen & Overy is the first law firm to sign up to the strategy’s new ‘business compact’, under which it has agreed to offer internships to young people from deprived backgrounds. It joins accountancy firms KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said: ‘A fair society is an open society where everybody is free to flourish and where birth is never destiny. In Britain today, life chances are narrowed for too many by the circumstances of their birth: the home they’re born into, the neighbourhood they grow up in or the jobs their parents do. Patterns of inequality are imprinted from one generation to the next. 



‘A recent report by the Sutton Trust estimated that the economic benefits of improving social mobility could be worth £140 billion a year by 2050. This is not only a question of fairness – opening up opportunities is in the interests of the economy and of the country.’

For the first time, the strategy includes a set of key indicators for defining how social mobility is measured so that it can be seen where measures are having the most impact and where the approach needs adjustment.

The strategy, Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers – A strategy for Social Mobility, can be read here.