Ex-Education Secretary Justine Greening says kids from sink schools should get jobs before Etonians
Greening has called for businesses to do more to help those from disadvantaged backgrounds climb the career ladder
FIRMS should be more inclined to offer jobs to candidates from struggling schools before elite ones, the ex-Education Secretary declared yesterday.
Justine Greening suggested applicants with the same grades from challenging backgrounds were more “impressive” than those from wealthy backgrounds.
And she said businesses should do more to help those from disadvantaged backgrounds climb the career ladder by looking beyond academic results.
According to the Times Educational supplement, she told a conference on social mobility on New York: “Contextual recruitment basically says when you’re looking at someone’s grades who’s applied for a job to you, look at in the context of the school they went to.
“You can easily do this, there’s software to help you as a company.
“If you get three Bs from Eton, you’re probably not as impressive as somebody who gets three Bs from the school in a part of the country where the school [wasn’t] doing well.”
Since she left the Cabinet, Ms Greening has said she wants too make social mobility her guiding mission.
It follows criticism of universities for favouring students from deprived areas for places.
A selection of Britain’s top unis now have schemes where undergraduates can get places despite having lower grades than middle class applicants.
But Professor Alan Smithers of the University of Buckingham said: “Like it or not, A-level results are the best indicator we have of capacity to benefit from higher education.
“Ignoring them in pursuit of ‘representative’ intakes will only weaken our universities.”
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