Employers should offer jobs to alumni of underperforming state schools over public school graduates, suggests Justine Greening

‘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’

Eton College alumni with same grades as state school alumni should not get preferential treatment, MP suggests (Getty)

Employers should offer jobs to former students of underperforming state schools over alumni from elite private schools like Eton who have the same grades, Tory MP Justine Greening has suggested.

The former education secretary called on companies to boost social mobility by using “contextual recruitment” – which takes into account the educational background of a candidate.

Ms Greening, who went to a state school, suggested that someone from a more challenging background – with the same grades as a candidate from Eton College – was more “impressive”.

The MP’s comments, made at a summit in New York on social mobility, were reported by Tes magazine.

“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,” she said at the event, organised by education charity the Sutton Trust.

“You can easily do this, there’s software to help you as a company. So 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.”

Ms Greening, who resigned from the government in January, said using contextual recruitment would allow companies to stop “fishing in a talent puddle and start fishing in a talent pool”.

Julie Robinson, general secretary of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents over 1,200 private schools, told Tes: “It is important to understand that school type is not of itself an indicator of socioeconomic advantage. For example, many pupils attending independent schools receive means-tested bursaries.

“Therefore, wherever ‘contextual recruitment’ is used, the process must take a range of factors into account in order to recruit the best person for the job.”

The latest annual census from ISC revealed that private school fees have risen by more than the rate of inflation, with families now paying out more than £5,700 a term on average.