Universities will this week be told they can adopt controversial admissions procedures which make lower offers to pupils from struggling state schools because they show greater potential than applicants from private schools.
The National Council for Educational Excellence will make its recommendations to Gordon Brown on Tuesday. The Guardian understands that a crude order to make lower offers of places to state school applicants has been rejected, but the report will endorse systems in place in several universities where admissions officers consider or make lower offers to students at schools which have little or no record of sending pupils to university.
A prime ministerial review group will also recommend new league tables of schools showing the number of students they send to top universities amid concerns that some are not putting bright pupils forward. A third idea would see a delay before universities could demand the new A-star grade being introduced for A-level this year.
