Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet member, said large numbers of universities – including several ex-polytechnics – admitted too many pupils from private schools while failing to reach out to the most deprived teenagers.
Speaking on Tueday, he warned that a major “rethink” was needed to widen access to higher education.
Mr Milburn, who is carrying out a review into social mobility for the Government, also admitted that Labour’s attempts to help poor children climb the social ladder was “flawed”.
The comments follow the publication of figures showing that teenagers from deprived backgrounds have slightly less chance of gaining places at leading universities than they did 15 years ago.
In the mid-90s, some 3.3 per cent of places at the top third of universities went to students from the poorest homes, but this proportion fell to 3.2 per cent in 2009.

Private schools send more children to uni as more of their children get the required grades. It might suck that money "buys" entry, but it's nor fair to refuse a child entry who has the grades just because of the school they went to. Socical engineering sucks ass!

Private schools send more children to uni as more of their children get the required grades. It might suck that money "buys" entry, but it's nor fair to refuse a child entry who has the grades just because of the school they went to. Socical engineering sucks ass!

Not just the required grades but much better grades at tougher exams. The meddling by ministers to create league tables has meant that the exams are considerably easier than in the past, in a race to the bottom. The private schools have switched to the baccalaureate because of this.

That's because of our stupid exam board system. Exam boards compete to get customers (ie schools) and they get them by making it slightly easier to get grades. That has gone on for years, hence the low standards of todays exams. The only one that didn't follow that trend of lowering standards was the Oxford & Cambridge exam board. As a result they went out of business as schools stopped using them.My schools had such a high failure rate in French, it switch exam boards to one that offered 100% coursework. The pass rate double in a year.