Discriminate against Old Etonians for jobs, says ex-education chief

‘Probably not as impressive’

PARENTS who splash out £40,000 a year sending their children to Eton no doubt expect it to give their offspring a leg-up in life.

But according to a Tory former minister, Old Etonians should be discriminated against in the jobs market because they are ‘not as impressive’ as other candidates with the same grades.

Justine Greening, who went to a comprehensive school in Rotherham, said Eton’s pupils do not automatically have the most ‘future potential’ as employees. She said employers needed to realise it is easier to get decent grades at a top private school than at an under performing comp and she urged bosses to use ‘contextual admissions’ – looking at which school candidates attended and how well they had done when background is taken into account.

At a summit on social mobility organised by the Sutton Trust in New York, Miss Greening said the measure would mean bright youngsters from deprived backgrounds are given a better chance.

Her comments, reported in the Times Educational Supplement, will reignite the debate over whether firms should discriminate according to class. She said: ‘Contextual recruitment basically says when you’re looking at someone’s grades… look at in the context of the school they went to.

‘You can easily do this, there’s software to help you… So if you get three Bs from Eton, you’re probably not as impressive as somebody who gets three Bs from the school in a part of the country where the school [wasn’t] doing well. That needs to be much more sophisticatedly used by companies to start looking at the quality of candidates and the potential candidates that are applying to them for careers and jobs.’

Miss Greening said research showed disadvantaged applicants were 50 per cent more likely to be hired using contextual recruitment than they otherwise would have been.

During her time as education secretary, Miss Greening put promoting equality of opportunity at the heart of her agenda. However, her latest suggestion is likely to prove controversial.

Chris King, of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, which represents an elite group of private schools, said it was wrong to assume every pupil from an independent school came from a privileged family or everyone from a state school was less well off. He added: ‘A third of all pupils at independent schools are admitted on reduced fees and 6,000 a year pay nothing because they cannot afford to. Inequality is serious but so is discriminating against any group of young job seekers.’

In 2016, there was fury when then Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock published plans to request that leading companies ask if potential employees were educated privately.

At the time provost of Eton William Waldegrave warned of ‘punishing’ children for decisions taken by their parents and the risks of filling jobs through not on merit but by ‘social engineering’.