Politicians across all of the major political parties have been advised to rethink their "broad" approach to shortening the attainment gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those from wealthier families.

Speaking to the Times Education Supplement, Dr Kathryn Asbury, a lecturer at the Psychology in Education Research Centre at the University of York, explained that "universal education policies" are an ineffective way of boosting equality in classrooms.

“If you have across-the-board policies – giving some new benefit to everybody, such as Bookstart or universal free school meals – that will do nothing to close the gap," Dr Asbury elaborated.

"It may make the average higher but it will do nothing to close the gap between the top and the tail. They are the policies we don’t need to throw money at."

She told the education news provider that it is somewhat senseless to adopt this generalised approach to reduce the disparity between rich and poor children. As such, investment should be geared to what she called "the lower end". In other words, focus investment on those most in need.

"By offering something to everybody you take away some of the variation which just makes the effect of genes greater," the academic concluded.

Dr Ashbury is the co-author of a recent book entitled G is for Genes, which argues that more efforts need to be made to utilise the power of genetics in education. Along with professor Robert Plomin, they query why more effort has not been made in this regard.

"Geneticists have cast their nets far and wide to influence and inform medicine and public health, agriculture, energy and the environment, law, and social policy," they state in their tome.

"Education, however, is glaringly absent from this list, and schools remain untouched by the lessons of genetics."