How about going by ability?

It's a bit of a minefield I know, but suggestions like this never fail to raise my hackles.

Telegraph.

Oxford, Cambridge and other top universities should set higher entry requirements for private school pupils than for poor children from state schools, ministers will say this week. 

The ruling will come in guidance for universities setting out what they must do to be allowed to charge the maximum £9,000-a-year tuition fees. To win permission to charge the highest level of fees, a university must show it is doing as much as it can to admit students from all backgrounds.

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, will tell leading colleges they must end "social segregation" and do more to bring in students from low-income families.

Universities will be urged to make more use of "differential offers", admitting poorer students from state schools with lower marks than those expected of private school pupils.

Mr Clegg is backing the "fair access" plans to make plans for higher fees more acceptable to Liberal Democrats and others unhappy at the Coalition's higher education policies.

Next year's rises in fees have led to warnings that the best universities charging the highest fees will become even more dominated by children from wealthy, middle-class homes.

 Now apart from the fact we've got too many people going to university anyway and that dumbing down has been going on for over a generation outside the private schools why should the top universities be forced to take in an influx of students who might not be able to cope anyway? University should not be easy, a degree should be the result of some serious study, so what do our politicians want? To force universities to take in some who have not reached the minimum standard they require. Yes, I know it's unfair for those who are less advantaged, who have struggled through the state system only to find that they've been betrayed by it, but that's not the issue here. Only the best of our best should be going through university, yes private education gives a definite advantage and can make the average kid perform better, but that simply means forcing our state schools to do better too. Private schooling means their pupils are "better educated" meaning they wont struggle at university or hopefully drop out because they will not have so much catching up to do.
Clegg should be looking at state education and forcing improvements through that or expanding the assisted places fund for the brighter state kids, not telling universities to take in smart but less well educated kids who will struggle to catch up as well as do all that is required for a degree.
Yes the system is unfair, but this isn't the solution.