Britain’s poor social mobility can be summed up in one unfortunate dynamic: from the moment a child is born, disadvantage begets further disadvantage. We like to think of education as the great leveller that works against this. But a report from the Institute of Education at UCL, reported in the Observer today, shows the opposite: our school system itself amplifies social advantage.

So much of the focus of education policy in the past two decades has been on school improvement, with hugely varying results. But what this study highlights is that when schools become better, their intakes also become more affluent. Conversely, when school quality has declined, children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to pool in those schools.

While the research does not draw a causal link, it did find that some schools are engaged in “aggressive marketing campaigns and ‘cream skimming’ aimed at recruiting particular types of students”. The result is one of the most outrageously unjust features of the English school system. Children from the most affluent backgrounds are twice as likely to go to a school rated as “outstanding” as children from the poorest backgrounds. And it is those children for whom school quality matters the most in shaping how they go on to do in life.

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This injustice is further exacerbated in a system with limited resources. Despite the growing school population, the number of teachers working in English state schools has fallen to its lowest level since 2013. Qualified teachers are leaving the profession at a faster rate than new recruits are joining. The best schools find it easiest to attract the best teachers; low-rated schools in poorer areas suffer most from teacher shortages, forcing them to rely on expensive agency staff, dragging down standards.

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It’s not just teachers: school funding is more constrained than it has been for decades. The cash each school gets allocated is overwhelmingly determined by its number of pupils. So it is undersubscribed – read underperforming – schools that tend to face the biggest budget struggles. This is further compounded for schools in disadvantaged areas, which are most affected by cuts to local children’s services and are too often left to pick up the pieces of serious behavioural and emotional problems that require support from specialist services.

The UK has one of the most socially segregated school systems in the developed world: a huge problem not just in terms of equity, but in terms of the overall performance of the economy. According to the OECD, the more socially mixed a school system, the better it performs. England is the only country in the developed world in which baby boomers have better levels of literacy and numeracy than young adults. Compared with our competitors, we have high numbers of young people from poorer backgrounds who are failed by the system and never given the opportunity to fulfil their potential.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The more affluent parents have the resources to get their children into the best schools. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Virtually all parents say they want to get their child into a highly rated school, regardless of their social background. But it is generally the more affluent, highly educated parents who have the resources to achieve this. House prices near top comprehensives tend to be 20% higher than they would otherwise be – an average premium of more than £45,000 in these areas. That’s a price that affluent families are more than willing to pay. Moreover, middle-class parents are more likely to conduct extensive research in choosing a school.

No one would begrudge any parent doing what they can – within the rules – to get their child into their preferred school. That’s why it is down to government to fix those rules to make them fairer. Schools should no longer be able to run their own admissions, and local authorities should instead be responsible for operating a fair system for all local schools, either allocating places by lottery, or ensuring that each school has a distribution of abilities. Either would result in a far more equitable, socially mixed system.

It would be no panacea: in some rural areas social mixing would be hard to achieve while still ensuring children can attend local schools. But it would at least put a stop to the best state schools quickly becoming magnets for pupils from the most affluent backgrounds, which limits the impact of any school improvement on disadvantaged children.

Instead, by spending £50m on expanding grammar school places, the government has taken school admissions in entirely the wrong direction. In creaming off the most able pupils, grammars increase social segregation to the detriment of poorer children. In London’s comprehensive school system, children from every social background do better than in Kent, which still has grammars.

Reforming admissions would undoubtedly be a big political fight to pick with those middle-class parents who would staunchly defend their right to move house to get their child into the best school. But it’s a fight worth picking. Parents will understandably do everything in their capacity to do best by their child, and that’s usually something to be celebrated and encouraged. But when it comes to state schools, it’s the government’s job to ensure that this doesn’t happen to the detriment of the most disadvantaged children.