Last Updated on November 2, 2026 by Karl Thompson
How to Break into the Elite was a BBC Two documentary, presented by the journalist Amol Rajan and first shown in August 2019. It asked why working-class graduates with good degrees struggle to get into Britain’s top jobs, and it drew on the research of the sociologist Sam Friedman. It’s a useful source for three things in A-level sociology:
- Evidence against the view that education is meritocratic: qualifications don’t guarantee equal outcomes.
- A clear illustration of cultural capital working after education has finished, in the job market.
- The idea of a class ceiling: a barrier that holds back people from working-class backgrounds even when they reach professional jobs.
The class ceiling: the research behind the documentary
Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison’s book The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged (2019) is the research the documentary drew on. Their best-known finding is the class pay gap: people from working-class backgrounds who make it into elite occupations earn, on average, 16% less than colleagues from privileged backgrounds, around £7,350 a year. The gap remains even after taking account of education and other factors that might explain it.
Their research has also been reported as finding that working-class graduates with first-class degrees are less likely to be hired into elite jobs than middle-class graduates with lower second-class (2:2) degrees.
What the documentary showed
The documentary presented several other figures, which I’ve summarised here as the programme gave them:
- About a third of the population come from working-class backgrounds, but only around 10% of people in Britain’s top professions do.
- Put another way, someone from an upper-middle-class background is around six times more likely to land an elite job.
- About a third of people working in banking and finance were privately educated, and in private equity the figure was nearer 70%.
- In the media, people with a parent working in film and television were many times more likely to work in the industry themselves, and a large majority of media workers came from professional and managerial backgrounds.
These figures are as the documentary presented them in 2019, and I haven’t been able to check each one against its original source. Treat them as illustrations; for an essay, the Friedman and Laurison class pay gap is the figure to quote.
Employers want “polish” as well as qualifications
The programme’s central argument was that top employers reward something universities don’t: polish. City recruiters, it suggested, look for candidates whose accent, mannerisms, behaviour and dress fit the firm. In finance sales in particular, staff were expected to seem “reassuringly expensive” to clients. One recruiter described how hard it was to place a candidate with a regional accent, however well qualified.
The media worked differently but with the same effect. Instead of formal polish, it valued a kind of studied informality: knowing how to be relaxed, knowing and in the right way. Working-class graduates often found this confusing and felt ill at ease.
The problem, the documentary argued, is that these rules are tacit: unwritten codes of dress, speech and behaviour that nobody explains. People brought up with them find them natural; people who weren’t struggle to make the leap.
Confidence and stability
The programme also suggested that young people from more advantaged backgrounds often grow up with more stable lives, and with their opinions listened to and valued by adults. That breeds confidence and ease, a sense that things will turn out all right, which shows in interviews.
The graduates it followed
The documentary followed several recent graduates. Two from working-class backgrounds with good degrees from leading universities were trying to get into finance; one struggled with confidence in interviews, while the other eventually won a place on a graduate scheme. Two working-class media students were also followed. The contrast was a privately educated graduate who used confidence and contacts to get media work experience, despite having no particular background in the field.
The former footballer and broadcaster Ian Wright also took part, talking about the class prejudice he has faced in his media career and arguing that people shouldn’t have to change who they are, or how they speak, to get on.
Applying sociology to the documentary
Cultural capital. “Polish” and the tacit codes of the media are what Pierre Bourdieu called embodied cultural capital: accent, manners, taste and confidence, absorbed so early that they feel natural. Bourdieu argued that this capital is converted into educational success. The documentary suggests it is also converted, separately, into success in the job market, even when qualifications are equal. Bourdieu’s idea of habitus fits the graduates who felt out of place: they had the qualifications, but not the dispositions that tell you how to act in an elite setting.
Social capital. The privately educated graduate’s contacts are an example of social capital: networks that open doors.
Meritocracy. Functionalists argue that education allocates people to jobs by ability. The class pay gap, and the finding that a first doesn’t protect working-class graduates against middle-class candidates with lower degrees, both suggest that qualifications are only part of what decides who gets the top jobs. This supports the Marxist idea of a myth of meritocracy.
Evaluation. A documentary isn’t a piece of research. It follows a handful of cases chosen by programme-makers, so it can illustrate a pattern but can’t prove one. That’s why it matters that the central claim rests on Friedman and Laurison’s large-scale research. Some working-class graduates also clearly do succeed, as one of the finance graduates did, so the class ceiling is a barrier, not a wall.
How this comes up in the exam
This is useful evaluation in the meritocracy essay: June 2021, Q04 on AQA Paper 1 (7192/1): Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the view that the education system is meritocratic. [30 marks]. It also works as evidence for cultural capital in essays on social class differences in achievement.
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Written by Karl Thompson, who taught A-level sociology for eighteen years and spent twelve as an AQA examiner, marking all three papers on the current specification.
Signposting and Related Posts
This post has been written primarily for students studying the education topic, as part of the AQA’s A-Level Sociology course.
There are very obvious links here to cultural capital and to meritocracy and education. You can find the full set of notes on the sociology of education page.
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Sources
BBC Two (2019) How to Break into the Elite, presented by Amol Rajan.
Friedman, S. and Laurison, D. (2019) The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged. Bristol: Policy Press.
London School of Economics (2021) Research impact case study: The class ceiling.