The universities of Cambridge and Oxford will publish figures showing they accepted record proportions of state school pupils in 2017, The Sunday Times has reported.

The Cambridge figure is expected to be higher than the record of 62.5 per cent in the previous year. About 93 per cent of British children go to state schools.

Cambridge is set to announce a scheme to recruit state school and ethnic minority pupils with lower A-level grades than their private school counterparts, and give them an extra “foundation year” of teaching before they enrol for a degree.

Professor Graham Virgo, pro-vice-chancellor for education at Cambridge, said told the Sunday Times: “We know we need to do more to attract those students who have the potential to study here, but have not been applying to us.” The new scheme will target pupils who have “experienced educational disadvantage” at school.

Virgo said Cambridge had decided not to lower its standard A-level offer, but would offer “extra help” to some students to “help bring them up to speed, and ease their transition to the demands of a Cambridge degree”.

A few days later, Oxford will also reveal a new high for state school acceptances in the 2017 admission cycle, topping the 57.7 per cent recorded in 2016. It will also release a table listing Oxford colleges and degree courses, and the number of state school and black British and other ethnic minority pupils each has enrolled. This is expected to throw up stark differences between colleges, with some having a more diverse intake than others.

The universities’ moves follow intense criticism of the admissions procedures of both, with recent government figures showing that they continue to have relatively low state-school entry rates.