Quotas tend to benefit the luckiest and best-prepared of the favoured group, not the most disadvantaged, says Andreas Schleicher, an education expert at the OECD.

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Against this background, the programme does appear to be yielding some benefits for a group that includes some particularly disadvantaged individuals: two-fifths of those entering the New Deal are functionally illiterate.

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Baroness Hollins, a crossbench peer and consultant psychiatrist in learning disability, described the group as among the "most disadvantaged and marginalised individuals in society".

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Some cautioned that the results could be overstated because Americans without a high school diploma about 12 percent of the population, down from about 22 percent in 1990, according to the Census Bureau were a shrinking group that was now more likely to be disadvantaged in ways besides education, compared with past generations.

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The Russell Group of leading universities said that it would be the most disadvantaged pupils who would lose out from a change to the system.

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With regards to educational development, the programme has created learning opportunities for socially disadvantaged adults and thus helped to solve the problem of illiteracy, unemployment and limited productivity among this target group.

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She said the loss of teaching jobs would have a "major impact on small group tuition, problem-based learning and on the pastoral care of students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds who often need extra support".

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