OLD SCHOOL-TIE STILL POWERFUL

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32119, 15 October 1969, Page 10

OLD SCHOOL-TIE STILL POWERFUL

CN.Z. Xssn.—Copyright) LONDON. The “old school-tie” still holds sway in Whitehall’s corridors of power, where the top Civil servants are an exclusive bunch, both socially and educationally. Most of the elite have middle or upper-class backgrounds and went from public schools to either Oxford or Cambridge. A report to the Fulton Committee, published recently, has confirmed the power of the school-tie in the cases of candidates for the administrative branch who were selected for posts even though they had lower academic qualifications than “the failures.” The “Evening News” quoted the report as saying that the pattern has begun to change, tentatively suggesting that there has been a kind of “self-selection” on the part Of students presenting themselves as candidates.

Women, the report finds, have better opportunities in the top echelons of the civil service if they are spinsters. Women form 8 per cent of the administrative classes and 44 per cent of other groups. But the civil service is seen as a particularly enlightened employer of women, with equal pay and prospects. “Progress into the higher grades, however, usually in-

volves spinsterhood,” the report said. “Thus for example, about three-fifths of the women in the administrative class are single compared with scarcely more than 10 per cent of the meh.” More flexible arrangements to recruit married women with grown-up children are urged in the report.