Leading article: We must explore ways to bridge the social divide

It comes as little surprise to learn that a majority of Britain's leading media figures were educated at private schools - and that this percentage has risen since a similar survey was carried out 20 years ago. A study of the nation's lawyers last year told the same story. Its findings were not just that Britain's judges, barristers and solicitors are still overwhelmingly educated at private schools but that, despite rigorous efforts to broaden the profession, the situation has in recent times actually deteriorated. A survey of Britain's politicians paints the same picture - with one-third of MPs and almost two-thirds of members of the House of Lords having gone to the kind of school from which more than 90 per cent of the population is excluded.

This is disturbing. It means those who make our laws, enforce them and pass comment upon them do not reflect society at large. Worse, the trends are in the wrong direction. The social mobility fostered by the old grammar school system is now in reverse. The 1970s and 80s schemes to open up the law, media and politics to a new generation of state-educated students have atrophied. Indeed the grip of privilege is tightening. Britain is now, after the US, bottom in international league tables of meritocracy. Nowhere is the gap in performance between private and state schools as large as in Britain - and nowhere is the link between parental wealth and a good education more clear. The paradox is that this has only been reinforced by recent government reforms.

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Take schools admissions. Under the old system, parents applied directly to schools. Under the new system - intended to achieve a fairer allocation of places - they apply to their local education authority. The result is that working-class parents are discouraged from applying for places at oversubscribed schools, fearing that if they fail their child will be allocated a place at a sink school. Instead they opt for a middling school; by contrast, middle-class parents are happy to take the risk, knowing that if their child fails to get in, they can go independent.

Or take the expansion in university places. This has enabled the percentage of children from poor families obtaining a degree to rise from 6 to 9 per cent. But it has increased graduation rates for the richest families far more - from 20 per cent to 47 per cent since the early 1980s. All this has been made worse by the introduction of top-up fees which have deterred far more working-class than middle-class students from applying to university - as many as one in four white working-class boys cites fear of debt as a disincentive. (Interestingly, race, which is a key factor in explaining America's low social mobility, is not a strong indicator in Britain.)

None of which is to argue against policies that were desirable for other reasons. It is merely to note that the law of unintended consequences applies. Some will argue that the way to restore social mobility is to bring back grammar schools. That is politically unrealistic. But it does mean politicians need to consider some countervailing measures - nothing as crass as bussing, manipulating catchment areas, or positive discrimination in university admissions. Such notions would do little for equity, social cohesion, or educational standards.

All the evidence points to a worsening of social mobility under this government, and rising house prices may further entrench social divides. Thus, we must explore imaginative suggestions such as the one by the Sutton Trust that independent schools that select solely on merit should be open to an unlimited number of candidates from poorer backgrounds whose fees would be paid by the state in a greatly expanded version of the old assisted places scheme. One thing is clear. An educational system that entrenches, and even intensifies, social privilege is not one suited to 21st-century Britain.