Sutton Trust Cabinet Analysis 2022 (Liz Truss)

The proportion of alumni of independent schools is higher than Boris Johnson’s first cabinet (64%). It is more than twice that of Theresa May’s 2016 cabinet (30%), and more than both Cameron’s 2015 cabinet (50%) and the 2010 coalition cabinet (62%).
The Prime Minister herself was comprehensively educated, but some of those heading up key departments – including the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary – are among those educated at independent schools.
The proportion of independently educated ministers attending Cabinet is less than earlier cabinets under Conservative Prime Ministers, John Major (71% in 1992) and Margaret Thatcher (91% in 1979). Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s cabinets were both 32% privately educated, while 25% of Clement Attlee’s first cabinet had been privately educated.
Of the 31 ministers attending Liz Truss’s new cabinet, 35% went to Oxford or Cambridge universities. This compares with 27% of all Conservative MPs, 18% of Labour MPs and 21% of all MPs. 29% of Truss’s cabinet were educated at other Russell Group universities (excluding Oxbridge). 26% of the new cabinet went through a ‘pipeline’ from fee-paying schools to Oxbridge.

Report Overview