An online current affairs magazine has set up a journalism summer school solely for state school students, in a bid to counter the private school bias for jobs in the media.

Spiked said it was running the journalism summer school for 16- to 18-year-old Londoners from state schools, who might not normally have the opportunities to get into journalism.

The initiative, sponsored by the City of London, comes at a time when research shows that half of leading journalists went to private schools. According to a survey released by the Sutton Trust in June, 54 per cent of national newspaper editors, columnists and broadcasters went to school in the private sector.