Schools have been advised to do more to improve exam results for disadvantaged children, for whom educational attainment is still “shockingly low”.

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission said that this is more than achievable as results from its new study on the matter showed that some schools in deprived areas have been able to boost standards in education.

In its report, entitled Cracking the Code: how schools can improve social mobility, the commission observed how these institutions are doing well to tackle the long-held view that “wealthier children will naturally excel while poorer children do not”.

Deprivation, the authors of the paper said, “need not be destiny” and accordingly, schools that are still struggling can learn a lot from their counterparts, who have and are turning things around.

The report showed, for example, that best-performing schools from areas designated as being deprived are helping three times as many disadvantaged children to achieve good grades in as many as five GCSEs.

Alan Milburn, chair of the commission, said that social mobility in Britain is “stalling”, as demonstrated by the widening gap in attainment levels between wealthy and poor children.

“This research has unearthed a new and shocking gap in performance between similar schools serving similar communities with similar intakes of poorer pupils,” he went on to say.

However, he continued, as the study shows, some schools are bucking this trend, demonstrating that real and meaningful change is possible.

“They have cracked the code on how to improve social mobility by helping disadvantaged children to excel in education, Mr Milburn added.

“If some schools can do it, there is no excuse for others not to. By following the lead of the code-breakers schools can transform the lives of tens of thousands more disadvantaged children.”

One of the key findings of the report is the relationship between the quality of teaching and the attainment levels of the students they teach.

Additionally, expectation plays a part in this - the less teachers have of disadvantaged students, the more likely that these pupils are going to struggle.