State school students studying in Reading are more likely than any others to get the A-levels necessary to get into Cambridge, research by the university shows.

The low-income London borough of Southwark lies at the other extreme: in 2006 none of the 111 maintained sector students doing A-levels achieved the requisite triple-A in the correct combination of subjects. This compared with 27 per cent of the pupils in the wealthy city on the outskirts of the capital.