Private School Pipeline and the Class Ceiling A REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY INTO THE CLASS DIVIDE WITHIN THE UK AND HOW IT AFFECTS THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY
“Britain is an increasingly divided society. Divided by politics, by class, by geography. Social mobility, the potential for those to achieve success regardless of their background, remains low.” (Lampl, 2019). Whilst rising numbers of students enrolling into higher education should signify the narrowing of class gaps within UK universities, there is evidence to suggest that the class divide is larger than ever. In 2020, GOV.UK released the Social Mobility Commission’s Annual Report, which found that students from middle-class backgrounds had an 80% higher chance of achieving higher results in education and going on to work in a professional role than that of working-class students (Gardiner, 2021). Britain’s most influential people are over 5 times more likely to have been to a fee-paying school than the general population – just 7% of British people are privately educated, compared to roughly 39% of those in top positions (Social Mobility Commission, 2019). This research revealed a pipeline from fee-paying schools through to Oxbridge, and into top jobs.
This is reflected too, within the wider publishing industry. Of the 100 most influential news editors and broadcasters, 43% went to fee-paying schools. 44% of newspaper columnists were privately educated, with a third – 33% – attending both private school and Oxford or Cambridge (Sutton Trust, 2020). The reasons why these groups are so over-represented within Britain are complex, but most stem from access to education opportunities, lack of financial barriers, and the accumulation of social and cultural capital – or in other words, nepotism. Research has shown that university graduates from a lower social class have more diverse and less stable career paths than the more structures routes of their more advantaged counterparts (UoE, 2020). Those from a lower economic background tend to have urgent financial motivation to apply for jobs as soon as possible, whereas those more privileged are able to wait until a better opportunity comes along, often a higher-ranking position or a more esteemed company. Almost 28% of new hires come from employee referrals (Alhanati, 2020) adding truth to the adage “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, showing in professional environments, connections make all the difference. “Even outsiders can spot the average media types who are just plodding along in daddy’s footsteps”, we still have aristocrats, but instead
of wearing green wellies and going shooting, they put on white coats and wigs and write columns (Kirkup, 2021). Among qualified journalists, 64% are from the highest socioeconomic group – 61% of the BBC’s staff fall within this bracket, too.
This provides opportunity to discuss the education of those in positions of power in the UK’s publishing industry, and whether their (often private) education helped or heeded their success. First, looking at HarperCollins UK, the CEO: Charlie Redmayne. He attended Eton College, an all-boys private school where fees cost £48,501 per year. About 20% of pupils at Eton receive financial aid (Eton, 2021), however Redmayne was not one of them. Many see such bursaries as mere tokenism (Hinsliffe, 2009), and many less advantaged students who attended Eton on scholarship have reported feeling out of place and like they ‘don’t belong’. This is an example of the class ceiling. Redmayne moved to HarperCollins as Chief Digital Officer in 2009 (Tagholm, 2013) with a range of accolades and industry successes, before becoming CEO in 2013. He took the reins from Victoria Barnsley, OBE who “hadn’t set out with a dream to be in publishing” and who’s success “was all rather accidental” (Bridge, 2003). Barnsley didn’t begin working until the age of 27, where she landed a job in a small publishing house in Clapham. Two years later she founded Fourth Estate, a small press, which she sold to HarperCollins in 2000. She merged into the company, becoming CEO in 2008.
Moving on to Canongate Books, another UK publisher, where Jamie Byng is CEO. Byng is son to the Earl of Strafford and was educated at Winchester College (Sunday Times, 2010). Winchester College is a fee-paying independent school regarded as among the most prestigious in the world (Best Schools, 2022). Byng’s stepfather is Christopher Bland, former chairman of the BBC, and his brother is former deputy editor of The Independent. This is relevant as it shows Byng’s connections within the industry. After graduating, Byng begun working at Canongate as an unpaid volunteer, before buying it two years later thanks to investments from his stepfather, and then father-in-law, banker Charles McVeigh (Times, 2010). Byng’s rise to the top has been aided by his privilege at every step: educated at one of the most prestigious schools, the ability to take an unpaid role without worrying over finance, then using his connections to buy the company 5 years after he graduated university.
Tom Weldon, CEO of Penguin Random House UK – studied at Oxford University (Penguin, 2021). Nigel Newton, CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing, educated at Selwyn College Cambridge University, and an American ‘prep’ school. There is a clear and distinct pattern here. Whilst
their private educations may not be the sole reason for their successions to CEO, there is no doubt that they were afforded many privileges because of it. Their education at private school did not hinder them from applying to Oxbridge, like my education at public school hindered me. It didn’t hinder their opportunity to apply to unpaid roles, living on generational wealth. It isn’t their fault, that the system designed to benefit children like them did its job exactly how it was supposed to. It is just further evidence of the pipeline from private education to jobs of prestige and power.
Private schools foster and create social inequality within education, and society at large. When children are raised with the ideals and knowledge that they are simply worth more than other children, it is a mindset that they carry throughout their life and career (Gamsu, 2021). There are a multitude of reasons as to how and why this is damaging within both individual companies and the job field in general. Unpaid internships are damaging to social mobility (SMC, 2017) and are now often one of the only routes into a career such as publishing (Hinsliff, 2009). These ‘opportunities’ favour those with both the cultural capital and connections to secure them, and those with the means to survive without a salary, in turn reinforcing the class ceiling for those who cannot do this. In such a tight job market the soft skills instilled by private schools –teamwork, negotiation, self-confidence – are critical.
Another issue that is stagnating the efforts of many to overcome the class ceiling is the antiquated idea that London is the be all and end all of publishing, and the insistence of having a London office. Many new graduates file into roles on average wages not suitable to fund a life in the Capital – around £25,000 per annum according to recent research (HESA, 2022). Only hiring candidates who live within an hour of your office is another way of enforcing an advantage – expecting your underpaid candidates to relocate to such an expensive location only reinforces the privilege and lack of awareness that many in positions of power uphold.
The commentary on private school privilege is always a difficult one to navigate. It’s well understood that social class is often correlated with earnings and career progression; the more money you come from, the better positioned you’re likely to be. On average, there’s an annual class pay gap of £6,800 within professional occupations (Ro, 2021). As with many distinguished and historic professions, publishing cannot escape the class bias so heavily rooted within it. The pipeline of private school to CEO is astonishingly clear, with the evidence provided above from 4 UK publishing houses. Independent presses are much more diverse,
both culturally and economically, and it is often those who come from less who are able to understand the industry from the perspective of the average consumer, and appeal to them. A great example of this is Influx Press, founded by Gary Budden and Kit Caless, which publish marginalised voices, and diverse literature. Neither founder attended private school, or Russell Group universities.
Will this ever change? Will there ever not be a divide? It is difficult to tell. The UK has improved hugely in a short period, in 1987, 70% of the FTSE 100 CEO’s had been privately educated with just 10% having received a state education, whereas in 2016 both privately and state educated CEO’s made up 34% respectively (Vina, 2016). Whilst this is still not representative of the UK’s general population, with privately educated still hugely overrepresented, it shows a huge shift within the UK’s industries and hope for social mobility. In 2015, Nikesh Shukla, a writer, asked: ‘how do we stop UK publishing being so posh and white?’ and argued that the problem is not the lack of diverse writers, but the structure of the industry itself, the social make up of editors, agents, and publishers – and rich, privileged CEO’s.
“The industry must change, but it will only do so if it is aware that, to survive, it has to have new voices; that any culture can only be kept alive by the new” (Kureishi, 2015). Britain should be furious about privilege, and not just because of a lack of justice but because a lack of quality (Kirkup, 2021). This is what debates about social mobility come down to in the end: some of the people who get the “top jobs” get them not because they’re the best at doing the work, but because of who their parents happened to be. Until public perspective changes, the industry will not.