Is it Coming Home? π ...with help from the 93% club β½
Unlike many other sports (athletics, cricket, rugby, tennis, anything olympic etc), the English national football team is much more representative of the general population. 15% of the 26 England squad members in Germany this summer attended private schools, compared to 7% of the population as a whole. But why should we care about the educational backgrounds of footballers? Surely what matters is not where they went to school but how well they play, right? www.93percent.club
Well, yes and no. It is actually both. While fans will naturally focus on goals, from a social mobility perspective the educational background of elite sports people reveals how their successes are themselves the result of competition on less even playing fields. www.suttontrust.com/news-opinion/all-news-opinion/is-englands-squad-in-a-class-of-their-own
A new generation of comprehensive educated Olympic medallists β including Laura Trott and Mo Farah β is challenging the traditional dominance of independent schools in elite sports. However, the Sutton Trust has found that Team GBβs top Olympians are still four times more likely to have been privately educated than the population as a whole, particularly in sports like rowing and hockey.
www.suttontrust.com/our-research/education-backgrounds-of-olympic-medallists
Elitist Britain www.suttontrust.com/elitist-britain-2019
Is it Coming Home? π ...with help from the 93% club β½
Unlike many other sports (athletics, cricket, rugby, tennis, anything olympic etc), the English national football team is much more representative of the general population. 15% of the 26 England squad members in Germany this summer attended private schools, compared to 7% of the population as a whole. But why should we care about the educational backgrounds of footballers? Surely what matters is not where they went to school but how well they play, right? www.93percent.club
Well, yes and no. It is actually both. While fans will naturally focus on goals, from a social mobility perspective the educational background of elite sports people reveals how their successes are themselves the result of competition on less even playing fields. www.suttontrust.com/news-opinion/all-news-opinion/is-englands-squad-in-a-class-of-their-own
A new generation of comprehensive educated Olympic medallists β including Laura Trott and Mo Farah β is challenging the traditional dominance of independent schools in elite sports. However, the Sutton Trust has found that Team GBβs top Olympians are still four times more likely to have been privately educated than the population as a whole, particularly in sports like rowing and hockey.
www.suttontrust.com/our-research/education-backgrounds-of-olympic-medallists
Elitist Britain www.suttontrust.com/elitist-britain-2019