The Educational Backgrounds of Leading Scientists and Scholars

Report Overview

Key Findings

• Four in ten (42%) of the UK’s most prestigious scientists and scholars were educated at independent schools.
• 40 schools, mostly independent, produced a quarter of today’s Fellows of the Royal Society and British Academy.
• Over half (56%) of the Fellows of the Royal Society and British Academy studied at Oxford or Cambridge.
• Over two thirds (68%) of British Academy Fellows educated in the UK went to Oxford or Cambridge universities compared with just under half (47%) of the UK educated Fellows at the Royal Society.
• Cambridge University particularly dominates the Royal Society – accounting for 34% of Fellows, compared to Oxford’s 13%.
• The school backgrounds of today’s Fellows closely mirror the student intakes to Oxbridge and other elite universities in the 1960s when many entered higher education.
• Current independent school pupils are on average four times as likely to achieve an A* in academic GCSEs than their state school counterparts, and constitute up to a half of the highest achieving pupils in some core academic subjects at age 16.
• Students in independent schools account for fewer than 15% of A level entries, but twice the proportion of A grades. Independent school students account for one third or more of top grades in key subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Economics and History.
• Current trends in student intakes to leading research universities suggest that independent school pupils will continue to be over-represented among the next generation of leading scientists and other scholars.