From today's paper:
"A few private schools educated one in eight of the most prominent people in Britain, according to research that will fuel debate on social inequality.
Only ten schools produced 12 per cent of the country?s most senior businessmen, politicians, diplomats and leaders of the professions.
Eton College accounted for 4 per cent of them, including David Cameron and Justin Welby, the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
The figures were compiled by the Sutton Trust, an education charity, to mark its 15th anniversary. It analysed the school backgrounds of 7,637 people whose birthdays were listed last year in the Register pages of The Times and other newspapers.
Nearly 80 per cent of the people who effectively run Britain attended fee-charging or selective schools: 44 per cent were educated at private schools, 8 per cent went to former direct-grant schools ? fee-paying establishments with places funded by the state ? and 27 per cent attended grammar schools.
On average only 7 per cent of children are educated at private schools, which drops to 6.5 per cent if overseas pupils boarding in Britain are omitted.
In ten professions or careers more than half of the most prominent figures were privately educated. They include national or local government (68 per cent), law (63 per cent), senior armed forces (60 per cent) and business (59 per cent).
The field with the fewest privately educated leaders was the police, with only 13 per cent of chief constables and other senior officers. Fifty seven per cent of top police officers attended grammar schools.
Only 10 per cent of the elite attended comprehensives, including Daniel Craig, the actor, and Robert Peston, the BBC journalist, while 1 per cent went to non-selective secondary modern schools. Among these were the actor Colin Firth and Sir Steve Redgrave, the Olympic rowing champion.
The study also looked at higher education. Of 8,112 people in Britain?s elite for whom details were found, almost a third (31 per cent) attended Oxford or Cambridge. A further 20 per cent were graduates of the next 30 most selective British universities. However, 22 per cent of public figures did not attend university.
The highest proportion of Oxbridge graduates were in the diplomatic service (62 per cent), law (58 per cent) and the Civil Service (55 per cent). The careers with fewest Oxbridge graduates were pop music (1 per cent), sport (8 per cent), the police (11 per cent) and the Armed Forces (12 per cent).
Many of the public figures whose details were analysed were educated before the 1970s, when the majority of England?s grammar schools were abolished. The actors Ray Winstone and Emma Thompson, Martin O?Neill, the Sunderland Football Club manager, and Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Mick Jagger are all former grammar school pupils.
The ten private schools with the highest number of ex-pupils to achieve national prominence are Eton, Winchester, Charterhouse, Rugby, Westminster, Marlborough, Dulwich, Harrow, St Paul?s Boys? School and Wellington College.
Of more than 100 schools that contributed most to Britain?s elite, two are comprehensives: Haverstock School in Chalk Farm, North London, attended by Ed and David Miliband, and Holland Park in Kensington, where Tony Benn sent his four children. The top grammar school, with 17 former pupils among the country?s leaders, was Watford Grammar, Hertfordshire, which is now a comprehensive.
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, told a conference in May hosted by Brighton College that the disproportionate success of people who were privately educated was ?morally indefensible?.
More detailed figures can be found here
The great and the good, and the others
The names that appear each day in The Times?s birthdays list are chosen by the Editor of the Register and his colleagues from a large database of birthdays (Fiona Wilson writes.) The obviously distinguished still predominate but we offer a once-inconceivable mix of backgrounds, ages and professions.
Last month the published list had an average of 17 names a day.
There are sometimes complaints when someone who has been in the list one year is left out the following year.
The convention until as recently as the late 1990s had been that, like Who?s Who or the House of Lords, once in, you were in for life; new names were added only when an obituary marked a vacancy.
But with space at a premium, a more varied world to reflect, it seems preferable to ring the changes and hope that omission one year may mean inclusion the next."