Quotas tend to benefit the luckiest and best-prepared of the favoured group, not the most disadvantaged, says Andreas Schleicher, an education expert at the OECD.

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The Russell Group of leading universities said that it would be the most disadvantaged pupils who would lose out from a change to the system.

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Baroness Hollins, a crossbench peer and consultant psychiatrist in learning disability, described the group as among the "most disadvantaged and marginalised individuals in society".

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Against this background, the programme does appear to be yielding some benefits for a group that includes some particularly disadvantaged individuals: two-fifths of those entering the New Deal are functionally illiterate.

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With regards to educational development, the programme has created learning opportunities for socially disadvantaged adults and thus helped to solve the problem of illiteracy, unemployment and limited productivity among this target group.

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She said the loss of teaching jobs would have a "major impact on small group tuition, problem-based learning and on the pastoral care of students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds who often need extra support".

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