Youngsters from Britain’s poorest communities will go to Harvard and Yale under a scholarship scheme unveiled yesterday.

Sam Gyimah, the Universities Minister, said he wanted a ‘fair crack of the whip’ for those from deprived schools, and to break the stranglehold of the ultra-wealthy on the US’s top Ivy League colleges.

The bursaries will be funded with £400,000 of government cash each year.

They will be run by the Fulbright Commission, an elite scholarship programme, which will explicitly target deprived youngsters for the first time in its 70-year history.

Sam Gyimah (pictured), the Universities Minister, said he wanted a 'fair crack of the whip' for thos from deprived schools

Mr Gyimah said he wants to target ‘those who never dreamed’ of attending US universities, which too often are ‘playgrounds’ for Britain’s ‘super-rich’.

Ivy League universities are even more expensive than their British counterparts. Tuition can cost up to £40,000 a year, although there are financial aid packages available for international students.

Attending the Ivy League has become the new way for wealthy youngsters to gain the edge on their peers, with entrants from British private schools rising by almost 20 per cent in the last three years.

They include Rory Farquharson, formerly head boy at Rugby School in Britain, who is now dating Barack Obama’s daughter Malia at Harvard.

Harry Potter star Emma Watson attended Brown University after leaving the £30,000-a-year Headington School in Oxford.

Harry Potter star Emma Watson attended Brown University after leaving the £30,000-a-year Headington School in Oxford

Demand is so great that London-based agencies are now charging up to £20,000 per pupil to guide families through the American application system.

The gruelling process sees candidates advised to set aside a minimum of 80 hours to fill in the forms.

Mr Gyimah said: ‘For the super-rich, the world is their playground. They choose where to study, they choose where to live, they can live in more than one country at a time.

‘There are huge advantages that come from that exposure. Allowing disadvantaged, bright and able students to be able to have that sort of exposure can only be a good thing for our country.’

Independent Schools Council figures showed that between 2014 and 2016, the number of private school pupils from the UK attending US universities jumped by 19 per cent, from 637 to 762.

The Fulbright Scholarship was set up in the aftermath of the Second World War to build bridges internationally. Since 1948 it has provided 23,000 scholarships, both to UK students studying in America, and US students coming here.