{UAH} Costly Choices of the Elite!!

Cameron blasts back at Major over the rule of public school elite: PM says he believes 'what counts is not where you come from but where you are going'

• Sir John, who is the son of a circus performer and garden gnome salesman, left school with only three O-levels

B

 

David Cameron yesterday rejected John Major's attack on the 'shocking' domination of public life by a private school elite.

The Prime Minister insisted he believes 'what counts is not where you come from but where you are going'.

But in his second speech to damage the Government in a month, Sir John told Tory activists he was 'outraged on behalf of the people abandoned when social mobility is lost'.

Sir John's speech comes at a time of deepening unease over the decline in social mobility that had, in the post-war years, let many children from working and lower-middle class backgrounds rise to the top

The former prime minister added: 'In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class.

 

More...

 'Our education system should help children out of the circumstances in which they were born, not lock them into the circumstances in which they were born.

'We need them to fly as high as their luck, their ability and their sheer hard graft can actually take them. And it isn't going to happen magically.'

Sir John, who is the son of a circus performer and garden gnome salesman, left school with only three O-levels

Mr Cameron, who went to Eton, is vulnerable to charges that his Cabinet is dominated by a privileged elite.

And some wavering Tories believe he should change tack and bring back grammar schools to help poorer children.

But Mr Cameron's spokesman said: 'At the heart of this is the importance of building what the Prime Minister has described as an aspiration nation. He has said what counts is not where you come from but where you are going.

'That's why we have put education reform and welfare reform at the heart of Government policy. The Prime Minister is saying we need to unleash and unlock the promise in everybody. What parents really want to know is that the Government has policies to ensure their kids can fulfil their talents and ambitions.'

Sir John's speech comes at a time of deepening unease over the decline in social mobility that had, in the post-war years, let many children from working and lower-middle class backgrounds rise to the top. Sir John, who is the son of a circus performer and garden gnome salesman, left school with only three O-levels. On the lack of children from less affluent backgrounds in powerful positions, he said: 'To me, from my background, I find that truly shocking.'

He blamed the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown Labour governments for leaving a 'Victorian divide between stagnation and aspiration'.

In October, in the wake of Labour leader Ed Miliband's promise of a freeze on energy prices, Sir John called for a windfall tax on energy companies and spoke of 'net-curtain poverty'.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries said the loss of selective schools was a major factor in denying progress to the underprivileged: 'I came from a council estate where the way out was to get to a grammar school.'

Sajid Javid, the Tory Financial Secretary to the Treasury and the son of a bus driver, suggested the Government was working to address Sir John's concerns.

'The important thing is that this Government continues to put forward its policies on education, on welfare, on the economy,' he added.