Three Bs from struggling comprehensive better than three As from top school, says leading UK employer

Senior Deloitte partner says he would be 'very interested' if candidate had Bs from school where A-level average was Ds

Angus Knowles-Cutler says if a candidate had three A’s from a school where that was the average, he would be less interested (Getty Images)

A candidate with three Bs at A-level from a struggling comprehensive stands a better chance of securing at one of the country’s leading employers than a job than someone with three As from a top performing school in the leafy suburbs, it has emerged.

Angus Knowles-Cutler, a senior London partner with consultants Deloitte, told a seminar in the House of Commons, said - if a candidate had three Bs from a school where the average was three Ds - he would be “very interested”.

However, if the candidate had three As from a school where three As was the average, he would be less interested.

“We will look absolutely at how schools are performing and how candidates are performing in them,” he said. “We’re doing it for the right social reasons but also for hard business reasons because we’re looking for people are going to strive and perform - and perform well under their relative circumstances.”

The comments coming amidst growing signs that many of Britain’s employers are taking steps to avoid bias towards those who hail from top performing schools - often independent - in the leafy suburbs.

The law firm Clifford Chance was one of the first to adopt a CV blind” approach for final interviews with all would-be recruits. Staff conducting the interview process are no longer given any information about which university a candidate attended or whether they comne from independent and state schools.

Deloitte, too, is one of a number of employers - others include the BBC, HSBC and the National Health Service - singled out by Prime Minister David Cameron for partaking in a “name-blind” recruitment initiative after it emerged that people with white-sounding names ended up with a much higher possibility of being shortlisted for a job.

The comments came at a seminar organised by Haringey Council in north London looking at the likely employment trends that will be needed in 2030. The council has set up a Commission to look into recruitment into the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects considered vital to the future success of the country.

Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, told the seminar that the two groups of occupations with the most resistance to their jobs being phased out - and replaced by robots - were those with a “high creative and technological content and those that needed a high level of emotional commitment as well as intelligence.

#In the former category, he listed IT engineers, doctors, dentists and vets. In the latter were employees in health care, child care or social care.

Mr Knowles-Cutler told the conference he liked the idea of employing “STEAM” candidates - who include the arts in the list of subjects they were studying. “We see people coming from the ‘STEAM’ road as being very strong candidates,” he said. “It also encourages women.

Despite this, though, Peter Hyman. headteacher of School 21 - a new free school in Newham. east London,- and a former Downing Street adviser during the Blair years, said nine out of 10 young people had abandoned the arts, music and drama by the age of 14,

Education, he said had to be about “the head, the heart and the hand” and not just an “exams factory” approach.