The Access Gap
John O’Leary,
Nov 15, 2013
The only thing that surprises me about this report is that the number could be as low as 25%. But this is a minimum figure, and the advantage gained by children of higher-income parents is likely much greater. So in this sense the THE headline is misleading. In any event, the report cited here (and available in full here) makes it clear that "children of wealthy parents already have much more access to opportunities to succeed than children of poor families, and this is likely to be increasingly the case in the future unless we take steps to ensure that all children have access to quality education." For example, "At the top English institutions only one in eight young undergraduates comes from 'lower' occupational backgrounds. This compares to more than half at some modern universities... Similarly, more than 40 per cent of Oxbridge students attended a private school." The Sutton Trust press release is here.
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