A-level results: Public schools expected to take lion's share of new A* grades

Privately educated pupils are expected to get three times as many of the new A* grades at A-level as state school students when results are announced this week.

The widening gulf between children in the independent sector and the state system will fuel concern about the social makeup of universities, which are under intense pressure this year as record numbers of applicants fight for places.

Bright children from the poorest homes are seven times less likely to go to a top university than their richer peers, according to the Office for Fair Access (Offa), an education watchdog.

The head of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents more than 1,200 fee-paying schools, told the Observer he expected the private sector to outperform the state by a striking margin when results were assessed proportionately. Just 7% of pupils in England and Wales are educated privately.

The ISC's chief executive, David Lyscom, said: "It looks as if we will get a disproportionate number of A* [grades] ... our pupils will perform very well at A* because of the way they are taught. Not being taught to a particular exam but teaching around the exam makes our pupils better at doing exams. It also means they are better suited for the demands of A*."

Private schools also invested heavily in teaching the skills needed for university entrance, Lyscom said, such as "teamwork, personal confidence, inter-personal relationships".

The A* grade is being awarded at A-level for the first time this year. Research by the ISC suggests 16.5% of last year's A-level entries in private schools would have earned an A* if the grade had been awarded then. This compares with 5% of state school candidates who would have been given it.

The expected disparity between private school and state achievement this week will add to controversy over the new top grade, brought in by the last government. Awarded to those with marks of above 90% in their second-year exams, the A* is meant to help the most selective universities choose the best candidates, after years in which the numbers who got an A kept rising. But Offa has expressed fears that the A* grade could strengthen private schools' grip on top-flight higher education.

Leading universities are split over whether to use the A*. Among the Russell Group of the UK's top institutions, Cambridge has made A*AA its standard offer in most subjects, while Imperial has requested it in seven courses, UCL in four and Warwick in one. But some top universities, including Oxford, have declined to use the A* this year, partly because of fears that private schools were more likely to colonise the elite grade.

The prospect of a wide gulf in achievement between state and fee-paying children has prompted renewed criticism of coalition plans to overhaul England's schools. Nic Dakin MP, a member of the Commons education select committee, said that coalition plans to transform schools were "gimmickry" and failed to address the divide. He predicted that the A* grade would help schools that could hothouse their pupils "rather than the state sector which is dealing with greater diversity in terms of the young people it is trying to cater for".

Dakin, Labour MP for Scunthorpe and a college principal, also criticised Michael Gove, the education secretary, for scrapping Labour's massive school-building programme. The Labour MP dismissed the government's announcement of an extra £4m for the Teach First charity, which places top-flight graduates in schools in deprived areas.

Narrowing the gap between the state sector and private schools was a "long haul", he said. "It's about investing in state education, not scrapping Building Schools for the Future, so that our state system can have the state-of-the-art accommodation our young people deserve." "The direction now is to turn the tap off, to play around with gimmickry. A bit of extra investment in Teach First seems a good thing, but it's gimmickry."

Gove's plans to enable parents and teachers to create their own "free schools" were irrelevant, the MP added. "It isn't about structure, it's about high-quality teaching and learning."

Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said: "University should be for all those with the potential to take advantage of the opportunities it presents, not just those whose parents have been able to afford the education and extracurricular activities that allow them to rise to the very top."

But Damian Hinds, a Tory member of the education select committee, said state schools could improve by emulating private ones. "It's a question of learning from those who do it best. It's not just about money, though more money being spent per pupil in the private sector is almost certainly the dominant factor."

The government last night pointed out that even state education in Britain was divided by wealth, with the richest able to buy into good schools by living in the right catchment area.

A coalition spokesman said: "Despite 13 years and billions of extra spending Labour failed to reduce inequality in this country's system. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has found that the gap between private and state in this country is one of the largest in the developed world. Out of the 80,000 children on free school meals, only 45 made it to Oxbridge.

"The coalition is committed to ensuring the least well-off get the kind of education that the rich can afford. That's why we are giving extra money for the poorest pupils in the form of a pupil premium and – like President [Barack] Obama is doing in America – we're starting a new generation of independent state schools with small classes and strong discipline in some of the poorest areas of the country." In a report published in May, Offa found that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds were less likely to get get into the most sought-after universities than more privileged children with similar ability, partly because the schools they went to did not offer in-demand subjects such as single sciences. The disparity between the poorest and the most privileged in access to highly competitive universities had worsened since the 1990s, the watchdog's report said.

• This article was amended on 16 August 2010. The original, in an editing error, stated that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds were less likely to get the grades required by the most sough-after universities. This has been corrected.