Real secret of success at BBC? Go to right school
ALMOST a third of BBC staff earning more than £150,000 a year were educated privately.
Around seven per cent of people attend an independent school but at the BBC around six times this level are in top jobs, figures show.
Fran Unsworth, the head of news who earns £340,000 a year, attended a fee-paying school in Staffordshire while political editor Laura Kuenssberg, paid £250,000, went to a private school near Glasgow.
Other well known BBC faces educated privately are world affairs editor John Simpson, security correspondent Frank Gardner, arts editor Will Gompertz and Radio 4 presenters Nick Robinson and Justin Webb.
The data reveals that people who attended fee-paying schools make up 28 per cent of those at the corporation on more than £150,000.
Among senior leaders in the news and current affairs department, the figure rises to 31 per cent.
Across the whole of the corporation, 57 per cent of the 12,000-strong workforce attended non-selective comprehensive-style schools while 1,942 had private school backgrounds. Former BBC presenter
‘BBC manager said I was too common’
Steph Mcgovern, who comes from Middlesbrough, said a manager told her she was “too common” to be a news anchor and she would have been paid more if she had come from a privileged background.
Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust charity – which promotes social mobility – said: “There is more to do to get the best talent into journalism, whatever their background.” A BBC spokesman said: “More than eight out of 10 of our workforce were educated in state schools, as were threequarters of our leaders.”