Private schools still dominate in the UK

What does your child want to be when he/she grows up? According to a new study published in 'The Independent' if it's a career in the media, the law or politics, their chances are multiplied many times over if they're in private education.

Research undertaken by education charity the Sutton Trust and published in the newspaper shows that the percentage of top jobs held by former public school pupils has risen by 10% in the past 20 years. In the media, 54% of top opinion-formers went to public school, compared to 49% two decades ago. A third came from selective grammar schools and only 14% from comprehensives. 45% had gone to Oxford or Cambridge universities.

Almost 70% of barristers were privately educated as were nearly one-third of MPs. The figure for Government ministers and their shadows is even higher, at 42%.

Yet just 7% of all pupils are educated in the private sector.

The latest figures fly in the face of Government policy to 'build new ladders of social mobility and advancement' as declared in the last Labour manifesto.

The very poor are also less likely to escape their background. 17% of those born into the poorest families in 1958 managed to move out of that bracket but only 16% of those born in 1970 did likewise.

Perhaps the most graphic demonstration of inequality comes with the news that children born to fathers in the lowest social class in 2001 were twice as likely to die within a year of birth than those from the highest social class.

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