About the Sutton Trust

• For example, for both university applicants and university students, those originally from the North of England were the most likely to be concerned their accent could affect their ability to succeed in the future (29% of university applicants and 41% at university from the North, vs 10% and 19% respectively for those in the South, excluding London). [...] It is by far the majority accent used by newsreaders on major TV networks, and the same dominance of RP can be observed in most other contexts of authority, for example, in Parliament, in politics more widely, in the civil service, in courtrooms, and in the corporate sector. [...] The stagnation of social mobility in the UK since 1970 makes this even more likely.7 Research across the UK over the past 50 years has consistently found strong correlations between the use of a non-standard accent and lower socio-economic status,8 making accent one of the primary signals of an individual’s social background. [...] To examine the role of accent more comprehensively, a team of researchers has recently developed an updated picture of attitudes to accent and implications for recruiting, both among the general public and in the sector of law as a sample elite profession (Accent Bias Britain, ESRC 2017-2021, www.accentbiasbritain.org). [...] The majority of respondents agreed that people in the UK are expected to develop a standard accent for the workplace regardless of their personal preference, yet almost none of the 178 respondents believed that this should be the case, nor that it is easy to change one’s accent.