"It's for everyone" was the message highlighted in the Olympics opening ceremony. Not quite. Even in the middle of an international sporting festival, where nothing but raw talent should count, you can't get away from the British class system. On the most conservative estimates, nearly a quarter of this year's Team GB (excluding those schooled abroad) were educated at fee-charging schools, attended by only 7% of the total child population. In the events where Britain is most likely to win medals – sailing and equestrianism, for example, which require a moneyed background even to participate – the proportion is much higher: hence David Cameron's claim that more than a third of the British medal winners at the 2008 Olympics were from private schools.
It is the same with many non-Olympic sports. Of the England cricket squad chosen to play this week's Test match, all seven batsmen, including two reared in South Africa, and one of the six bowlers (who do the harder work and are, therefore, traditionally drawn from plebeian backgrounds) were privately educated. So were two-thirds of the England rugby union team. Only football, eschewed by many public schools because of its proletarian associations, remains almost entirely dominated by state school alumni at the top level.
Continue reading...