Liz Truss: I’m the first prime minister to go to a comprehensive school

Liz Truss has come under fire for claiming to be the first prime minister to have attended a comprehensive school - despite several other PMs having gone to state schools.

Giving her first speech as leader to the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Truss said: “I stand here as the first prime minister of our country to have gone to a comprehensive school.”

Truss attended Roundhay School, in Leeds, before obtaining a PPE from Oxford University’s Merton College.

However, James Callaghan, a former Labour prime minister, went to Northern Secondary School in Portsmouth, while former Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George also attended an Anglican school in Llanystumdwy, Wales.

Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown went to Kirkcaldy High School in Fife, although at the time it was a selective school.

Labour’s Harold Wilson, and the Conservative’s Edward Heath, John Major and Theresa May all attended selective state grammar schools.

Despite this, there is still a large divide in the number of prime ministers to have received state education as opposed to private education.

Only around seven per cent of people in the UK are privately educated, and yet since Robert Walpole, 48 prime ministers have come from elite backgrounds, as opposed to the eight mentioned above who received a state education.