THE Social Mobility Commission - headed by former Darlington MP Alan Milburn – has called on schools to do more to improve exam results for poorer children.

The major new report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission shows that overall results for disadvantaged children remain shockingly low but that some schools in highly disadvantaged areas have cracked the code on how to improve social mobility.

Mr Milburn called on weaker schools with poor results to learn from other schools which have a similar intake but better results.

The Cracking the Code report found that the North-East had the biggest gap in the country between the percentage of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ secondary schools which had the most deprived intake and those schools which had the least deprived intake.

It found that only 30 per cent of North-East secondary schools with the most deprived intake were good or outstanding compared to 79 per cent of North-East secondary schools with the least deprived intake.

The report shows the best performing schools nationally are helping three times as many disadvantaged children to achieve five good GCSEs including English and Maths as schools with similar levels of disadvantage.

In the best performing schools, 60 per cent of disadvantaged children achieve five good GCSEs including English and Maths compared to only 25 per cent in the lowest performing.

If schools closed half the gap in performance to the top 20 per cent of schools with similar concentrations of disadvantage, over 14,000 more disadvantaged students would get 5 good GCSEs each year.

Alan Milburn, chair of the commission, said: “Some schools are proving that deprivation needn't be destiny. They have cracked the code on how to improve social mobility by helping disadvantaged children to excel in education. If some schools can do it, there is no excuse for others not to.”