Nobody wants to hear this because it is so uncomfortable to talk about, but as the country's teenagers reel from the A-levels scandal and its class-based bias, we *need* to start talking about the impact of private schools on architecture.

Today, around 93% of British people go to state schools, but when the AF analysed the 93 architecture practices who'd got into its 2016 book, New Architects 3, it found that *fewer than half* of their founders had been to state schools.

Just 45% of those who set up companies celebrated in New Architects 3 went to state schools. For context, last year at Cambridge University, 68% of new students were from state school. Succeeding in architecture practice is more elitist than the most elite university in the world

I have zero high horse to preach from. The vast majority of my schooling was home education — which is possibly the most privileged form of 1:1 tutoring imaginable. But the point stands. We're incredibly biased in favour of the alumni of elite schools.

Architecture is getting slowly better at talking about equality and diversity but we still utterly suck at even acknowledging one of the biggest elephants in the room — private schooling. It's time for those of us who've enjoyed elite educations to take a step back.

To every A-level student, including some of Open City's Accelerate graduates, whose hard-earned qualifications have been stripped from them today by a school system intent on rewarding those who already have the most, deepest solidarity — we can and will fight this.

Dezeen has written this thread up as a story with better research and stats: https://www.dezeen.com/2020/08/18/architecture-elitist-phineas-harper/