Careers in law, med­i­cine and the media are become more exclu­sive, while cit­i­zens from deprived areas con­tinue to be failed by edu­ca­tion. New States­man pro­vides a sum­mary of (some) social mobil­ity issues in the U.K., includ­ing these some­what star­tling statistics:

  • Pri­vately edu­cated can­di­dates account for 7 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, but occupy more than half of the top pro­fes­sional jobs.
  • 75 per cent of judges, 45 per cent of senior civil ser­vants, and a third of MPs are pri­vately educated.
  • More than 4 in 10 places and Oxford and Cam­bridge go to pri­vately edu­cated candidates.
  • 600,000 chil­dren take GCSEs annu­ally. 360,000 do not get the five good grades required for uni­ver­sity or employ­ment (60 per cent).
  • 30 per cent of chil­dren on free school meals do not get good GCSEs.
  • Of stu­dents get­ting 3 As at A-Level, just 0.5 per cent were eli­gi­ble for free school meals.

I am reminded of another set of statistics–these from For­eign Pol­icy on var­i­ous belief sys­tems in Amer­ica:

  • Per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who believe in angels: 55
  • Per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who believe in evo­lu­tion: 39
  • Per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who believe in anthro­pogenic global warm­ing: 36
  • Per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who believe in ghosts: 34
  • Per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who believe in UFOs: 34

Addi­tion­ally:

  • Per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who believe in extrasen­sory per­cep­tion, or ESP: 48
  • Per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who believe in the exis­tence of spells or witch­craft: 19