Wanted for BBC news, staff who boast state education

THE BBC is to direct its revamped recruitment policies at news and current affairs after figures showed the department has the highest proportion of privately educated staff.

Data from the corporation’s Equality Information Report found that 22.7 per cent of employees in the news division went to independent or fee-paying schools. In the management ranks, the figure is 34.7 per cent.

Another 26.4 per cent of employees att ended s t ate - f unded s el e ctive schools, with 50.9 per cent educated at comprehensive schools.

Managers in news and current affairs are also more likely than any other department to come from families in which at least one parent had a university degree (39.2 per cent). Across the BBC, 15 per cent of staff hired in the past 12 months attended private schools. The national average is 6 per cent.

Tim Davie, the director-general, signalled this week that the BBC was changing its recruitment process to hire people from more diverse educational backgrounds.

“It can’t be that we just take people from a certain academic track,” he said.

Privately educated BBC news staff include Andrew Marr, its main political interviewer, Laura Kuenssberg and Vicki Young, the political and deputy political editors, Jo Coburn, presenter of Politics Live, and every presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Emily Maitlis attended a state school, but she is an Oxbridge graduate.