Revealed, the elite schools behind an Old Girls’ Network

WE all know about the Old Boys’ Network, with schools such as Eton and Harrow producing many of Britain’s prime ministers.

Now research has found that the Old Girls’ Network is almost as important in maintaining privilege.

Former pupils from just 12 leading girls’ public schools are 20 times more likely to reach elite positions in society than women who attended any other school.

These include Cheltenham Ladies’ College, attended by former home secretary Amber Rudd, and St Paul’s Girls’ School in west London, alma mater of actress Rachel Weisz and Labour MP Harriet Harman.

Attending an elite school was also instrumental in helping women meet and marry elite men who could advance their careers, the research found. And private members’ clubs, such as the Albemarle Club, the University Women’s Club and, in more recent times, the Reform Club and the Athenaeum Club, played a role in recruitment to elite jobs.

Co-author Professor Sam Friedman, of the London School of Economics (LSE), said: ‘These results illustrate that elite girls’ schools are important engines of inequality.’

He added that it ‘makes a mockery of the notion that equality of opportunity exists in contemporary Britain’.

The research, by academics from Oxford and Exeter universities and the LSE, analysed 120 years of data contained in Who’s Who.

At the peak of their power, elite girls’ schools educated 12 per cent of Who’s Who entrants.

But the research found these elite girls’ schools have been ‘consistently less propulsive than their male-only counterparts.’ Previous research, also based on Who’s Who, indicated that ex-pupils of nine leading boys’ public schools, known as the Clarendon Schools, are 35 times more likely than other men to reach the most powerful elite positions. The study is published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education.