Lee Elliot Major: A British Obama would need an elite education

Could the United Kingdom produce its own Barack Obama as Prime Minister? The question nags away in our minds as we contemplate a new world graced by the first black president of the United States. Obama's election was social mobility at its most dramatic and inspiring, a welcome ray of hope in these gloomy times of impending economic hardship. The president-elect has sought to play down the colour of his skin, using his meteoric rise to highlight the hope that anyone from any background can succeed in life through hard graft and determination. In short, the American dream is alive and well.

Yet Obama's inspirational tale of upward mobility is a journey that demonstrates primarily the transformative powers of an elite education. There is no doubting young Barack's humble origins. But he was born to two highly-educated and motivated parents who met at university. A scholarship allowed him to enter an exclusive private prep school, from where he went to a private college, and then to a private Ivy League university. Later came Harvard law school. It was from this academic citadel that the dream of the highest office became possible.

In the US, as in Britain, a small cadre of exclusive feeder schools supply the vast majority of leading figures in public life. Last year, a Sutton Trust report found that in the UK just 200 schools supplied half of all Oxbridge places. A series of Trust surveys has revealed that over half of the most influential people in politics, law and the news media were educated in independent schools, which make up just 7 per cent of schools. Famously, all our previous post-war prime ministers who went to university, went to one institution: Oxford.

Who gets to the top should be a key issue for the Government as it prepares a white paper on social mobility due in December. Quite rightly, the focus will be on issues of a much larger scale: improving the skills of a population where too many of us still suffer from poor basic literacy and numeracy; providing second chances for those who missed university first time round; and improving support in the early years for the most needy.

All are worthy goals. But unless we also address the thorny issue of who gains access to the country's best academic schools and universities, then those goals alone are unlikely to transform the social make-up of our elites.

Only in the UK could this issue so polarise, and paralyse, public debate. In many parts of the education system, focusing on the academic elite is almost scorned – as if any attention to widening the intake to top research universities somehow belittles the often brilliant work carried out elsewhere to educate youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds. And many education policy formers appear to operate in a state of denial – as if the elite cliques of universities or prestigious independent schools didn't exist at all.

The Sutton Trust adopts a dual approach – trying to improve the advice for and the aspirations of children in all schools, while advocating ways of opening up leading state and independent schools to pupils from a broader range of social backgrounds. We believe that the social composition of universities will only change radically if they work with schools earlier on – to prevent academic talent being lost long before it has had a chance to be nurtured.

An increasing dilemma for the UK and the US, both of which languish towards the bottom of international league tables for social and education mobility, are the escalating costs of securing high end mobility. One wonders whether an Obama growing up today could afford the high costs of school and university fees – even in America.

Could the looming economic downturn help to curtail the power of the super-rich to buy the best education, and encourage more middle-class families to avoid school fees and stick with local state schools? Perhaps. But at the same time we know that the recession is likely to particularly hit those on the lower rungs of society.

Obama's election will of course be an inspiration to many from less privileged backgrounds to achieve their own successes in life. But I suspect that Britain's Obama, if there ever is one, will be a young talent lucky enough to gain access to an elite education.

The writer is research director of the Sutton Trust