Research: Does Team Scotland have the right players?

Published 8th October 2020

In 2015 the David Hume Institute published Elitist Scotland? in partnership with the Social Mobility Commission, examining the education diversity of the top decision makers in Scotland.

Five years on we repeated the analysis and increased the scope to investigate gender and ethnicity of the top 708 people in key leadership positions in Scotland. The analysis showed there has been progress in some sectors but others are still lagging behind.

In 2020 analysis of Scotland’s top leaders shows some sectors have made progress towards being more representative of the Scottish population. The Scottish Cabinet and local government Chief Executives are leading the way, however there is much more work to do to improve diversity, especially in the business and legal sector.

With private school students making up just 6% of the Scottish senior school population, Scotland’s top leaders continue to be disproportionately made up from the alumni of fee-paying schools.

In 2015 the percentage of those in leadership positions who were educated at a fee-paying school stood at 23% or nearly one in four. In the last five years this percentage has marginally decreased to 21.3%. 

Currently only 1% of those in leadership positions in Scotland are people of colour.  32% of those in this study are women, and only 2 in the 2020 analysis (0.3 %) are women of colour. No subjects were identified with a disability. 

If change continues at the current rate it will be at least 2065 before people in leadership positions in Scotland are representative of the population. 

Why is this important?

It is now well established that diversity of thought improves an organisation’s performance. The challenges Covid-19 brings mean we need to ensure diversity of thought across all decision making so Scotland is as strong as possible for whatever is the new normal.  

Scotland cannot afford for the pace of change in its top team to continue at the current rate.  More equal societies have higher productivity. And high productivity allows more investment to create more equal societies.

Scotland needs all of our current top leaders to actively champion diversity and proactively provide the opportunities to ensure faster progress. 

What happens now?

The David Hume Institute is committed to equality and diversity of thought - and we know that what gets measured gets done. We will continue to measure this data with the aim of highlighting progress and celebrating those that want to help deliver change at a faster pace.