Where do professional sportspeople go to school?

External sourcein Schools & Colleges

State schools do not play enough competitive sport at a high level, it has been warned. But do private schools dominate professional sport?

Even before last year's London Olympics, Prime Minister David Cameron was concerned that private schools produced "more than their fair share of medal winners".

Up to the age of 16, about 93% of children in the UK go to state schools. But this was not reflected among gold medal-winning Olympians.

The Good Schools Guide noted that 12 out of 41 British gold medal-winners educated in the UK attended private school. (A 42nd medal winner's educational background was unknown and a 43rd was schooled in Germany).

That's about 29%.

But break it down by category and there's plenty of variety.

Take rowing, and the 10 gold medal winners were split 50/50, state and private. At the other end of the spectrum in cycling, only one out of 12 gold medallists went to private school - Sir Chris Hoy.

It's a much smaller group but all three of the track and field gold medallists were state school-educated.

All three of the boxing golds were also state school-educated.

School PE 'not strenuous enough'

There is not enough strenuous, physical activity in many of England's school PE lessons, education inspectors say.

Teachers tend to talk too much in sessions and often lack specialist training, the Ofsted report on primary and secondary PE adds.

That's just the gold medallists of course. Malcolm Tozer, editor of Physical Education and Sport in Independent Schools, identified that 93 out of 542 members of Team GB for London 2012 were educated at independent schools. That's 17%.

Away from the Olympics, the ratios vary in professional sport.

England's recent one-day cricket squad to face New Zealand featured seven privately schooled players out of 15 - about 47%. Even without including Eoin Morgan, who was privately educated in Ireland, that still leaves almost half the squad.

Current captains Alistair Cook and Stuart Broad both went to private school.

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