Here's an exam question for you. FTSE 100 chief executives are split equally between those educated privately and those who went to a state school. A new government imposes a radical system compelling companies to fill 70% of boardroom vacancies with state-educated candidates. Assuming 10 chief executives leave every year, how long does it take to get to the point where 70% of FTSE 100 bosses are from the state sector?
The answer – after a lot of other assumptions – is a decade. This is instructive, as a consultancy called Equal Approach is bemoaning the "slow progress" of changing the status quo, in which 45% of FTSE 100 chief executives and chairs were schooled privately in the UK, while 28% studied at Oxbridge.
Even so, it is hard to see a reason to moan on this topic. The kiwi Ross McEwan has just got the top job at Royal Bank of Scotland, while Mark Selway, an Australian, has bagged the vacancy at the engineering group IMI.
Of the newly installed Brits, the BT Group boss, Gavin Patterson, went to Cambridge but also to a comprehensive school.
What a thoughtful pupil may notice, however, is that the FTSE is dominated by white, middle-aged men. In the study of diversity, schooling is not the main question.
