Where did the Education Secretaries go to school?

93% of Education Secretaries attended private or grammar schools. Only two did not.

1	Rab Butler	Marlborough
2	Richard Law	Shrewsbury School
3	Ellen Wilkinson	Ardwick school
4	George Tomlinson	Rishton Wesleyan School
5	Florence Horsbrugh	Lansdown House
6	Geoffrey Lloyd	Harrow School
7	David Eccles	Winchester
8	Edward Boyle	Eton
9	Quintin Hogg	Eton
10	Michael Stewart	Christ’s Hospital
11	Anthony Crosland	Highgate School
12	Patrick Gordon Walker	Wellington
13	Edward Short	College of the Venerable Bede
14	Margaret Thatcher	Kevesten & Grantham Girls’ School
15	Reg Prentice	Whitgift School
16	Fred Mulley	Warwick School
17	Shirley Williams	St Paul’s Girl School
18	Mark Carlisle	Abingdon School
19	Keith Joseph	Harrow School
20	Kenneth Baker	Hampton Grammar
21	John MacGregor	Merchiston Castle School
22	Kenneth Clarke	Nottingham High School
23	John Patten	Wimbledon College
24	Gillian Shephard	North Walsham Girls School
25	David Blunkett	Royal National College for the Blind
26	Estelle Morris	Whalley Range Grammar
27	Charles Clarke	Highgate School
28	Ruth Kelly	Sutton High School
29	Alan Johnson	Sloane Grammar School
30	Edward Balls	Nottingham High School
31	Michael Gove	Robert Gordon’s College

The first was brought to my attention by @oldandrewuk who pointed out that David Blunkett bucked the trend. Denied the opportunity to sit the test for grammar school, Blunkett was sent to the residential Royal National College for the Blind. Once there his teacher insisted blind children did not need qualifications and instead taught him to type.

The second escaped my radar because he barely went to school at all. Only when reading his biography did I learn that George Tomlinson became a cotton mill ‘half-timer’ when he was aged 12. By 13, he worked there full-time.

Does it matter?

One can argue that the place where a Minister is schooled doesn’t really matter. Yet when George Tomlinson took up post The Spectator did not see it that way. Their editorial said:

“To put the Ministry of Education, concerned as it is with the whole range of secondary schools, grammar, modern and technical, as well as the primary schools, in the hands of a man who left a primary school at the age of 12 and has had no other formal education at all – that, it must be said again, is a surprising proceeding which raises disturbing questions as to what the conception of education in the present Government’s view is.”

Funny how a similar furore was never kicked up about the very many Ministers from independent schools who had not experienced a single one of these school types.