Here are the universities doing the least to help students from lower income backgrounds

The universities doing the least to help students from lower income backgrounds have now been revealed thanks to research conducted by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

The IFS calculated the percentage of students at university who used to be on free school meals and later went onto jobs that payed in the top 20 per cent.

Oxbridge, Exeter and and Bristol were among the worst performing universities for promoting social mobility, while Queen Mary’s (QMUL) was the sole member of the Russell Group with an outstanding record for admitting students who used to be on free school meals and then went onto high paid jobs

Professor Colin Bailey, the Principal of QMUL, told The Guardian he was “incredibly proud” of this achievement. “Recruiting students from backgrounds typically under-represented at universities, and supporting them to succeed, is at the heart of everything we stand for as a university,” Prof Bailey said.

Other universities with a proven track record of boosting social mobility include: Westminster, City University, Greenwich and London South Bank.

A spokesperson for the IFS said: “Despite having very high success rates, we see that the elite institutions do very poorly in terms of mobility rates, as they let in so few low-income students. Instead, low- to mid-ranking institutions, often based in London, are the best performers in terms of mobility.”

The average social mobility rate across English universities stands at 1.3 per cent. Here’s a full breakdown of the English universities doing the least to help those from lower income backgrounds:

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