Local government is less elitist than other parts of society, a major new report has found.
Just 15% of local government leaders and 8% of council chief executives attended independent schools compared to 33% for MPs, 26% of BBC executives and 22% of chief constables, the report said.
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission found 9% of local government chief executives and 8% of council leaders studied at Oxford or Cambridge compared to more than half of Whitehall permanent secretaries.
Commission chair Alan Milburn said: ‘Where institutions rely on too narrow a range of people from too narrow a range of backgrounds with too narrow a range of experiences they risk behaving in ways and focussing on issues that are of salience only to a minority but not the majority in society.’
The study called for a national effort involving government, parents, schools, universities and employers to ‘break open’ Britain’s elite.
It analysed the backgrounds of more than 4,000 individuals holding top jobs in British society.
