Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0003-2162-8166

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Education, general, including:, Social topics, Political science

Publication Details

Comparing the roles of secondary schools and universities in the formation of British cabinet ministers 1922-2022.

doi:10.21427/8abs-d597

Abstract

The role played by the education system in the creation and reproduction of governing elites, and its countervailing potential to create a more meritocratic and egalitarian society, has been a topic of enduring concern. However, these debates have been rendered opaque by an inability to directly compare elite formation systems both within and between countries. To resolve this problem, we employ elite formation quantitative indices to compare the roles of the secondary school and higher education systems, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in the formation of its political elite – cabinet ministers – between 1922–2022. Our findings show that the universities educating cabinet ministers have been more elite and influential that the secondary schools, but not more exclusive. Additionally, while only a small number of universities and schools supplied more than one cabinet minister over the century, a very small number of universities and schools supplied a great many.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/8abs-d597

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Available for download on Friday, February 13, 2026


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