Foreign secretary says comprehensive-educated children will find it more difficult to become cabinet ministers in future
Comprehensive-educated children will find it more difficult to become senior cabinets ministers in the future as a result of falling standards in state education, the foreign secretary, William Hague, has said.
In his first response to the claim by Sir John Major that privately educated people dominate every sphere of British life, Hague suggested social mobility had moved backwards since he attended a comprehensive school in Rotherham in the late 1970s.
Asked about Major's remarks, Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme from the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Sri Lanka: "I did go to a comprehensive school and I have become foreign secretary so not everything goes to people privately educated.
"The disturbing thing I would say is that in the 30-odd years since I was at a comprehensive school I think probably in those intervening decades it will have become a bit harder for somebody from a comprehensive school to become the foreign secretary of the future or whatever other position they might aspire to.
"That reflects on a long period of this country falling too far behind in state education in the world. Thankfully we now have the best education secretary in living memory, or longer, who is trying to put that right."
Hague laughed off suggestions that his background might make him feel socially inferior to David Cameron, who attended Eton.
He said: "I can tell you having grown in South Yorkshire, in Rotherham, and been to a local comprehensive school I have never felt socially inferior to anybody and I have met most of the kings, presidents, Queens and princes of the world." Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.
Comprehensive-educated children will find it more difficult to become senior cabinets ministers in the future as a result of falling standards in state education, the foreign secretary, William Hague, has said.
In his first response to the claim by Sir John Major that privately educated people dominate every sphere of British life, Hague suggested social mobility had moved backwards since he attended a comprehensive school in Rotherham in the late 1970s.
Asked about Major's remarks, Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme from the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Sri Lanka: "I did go to a comprehensive school and I have become foreign secretary so not everything goes to people privately educated.
"The disturbing thing I would say is that in the 30-odd years since I was at a comprehensive school I think probably in those intervening decades it will have become a bit harder for somebody from a comprehensive school to become the foreign secretary of the future or whatever other position they might aspire to.
"That reflects on a long period of this country falling too far behind in state education in the world. Thankfully we now have the best education secretary in living memory, or longer, who is trying to put that right."
Hague laughed off suggestions that his background might make him feel socially inferior to David Cameron, who attended Eton.
He said: "I can tell you having grown in South Yorkshire, in Rotherham, and been to a local comprehensive school I have never felt socially inferior to anybody and I have met most of the kings, presidents, Queens and princes of the world." Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.