Privately-educated dominate Scottish establishment, report finds

People from privileged backgrounds dominate the top professions in Scotland, a new report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has found.

‘Elitist Scotland’, published today, reveals 45 per cent of senior judges, 32 per cent of top media professionals and 28 per cent of Scottish business leaders are privately educated, compared to less than 6 per cent of the Scottish population overall.

Also, a high proportion studied at the four ancient universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Saint Andrews.

The report follows previous report ‘Elitist Britain’ which showed important UK institutions are dominated by a narrow elite.

Commissioner Alan Milburn said it showed poor social mobility was not just “an English disease” but shared across the UK.

“It is both a wake-up call and a call to arms - to focus as much on helping people move up in society as on helping them off the bottom of society. Action is needed on both fronts if social justice is truly to be the motif for this nation,” he said.

Douglas Hamilton, Scotland’s Commissioner on the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, said “Recent moves to address education inequalities and widen access to university are a step in the right direction, but today’s report shows that there is still a long way to go.”