PUPILS who achieve higher than predicted A-level grades will be encouraged to apply for places at better universities under reforms to be announced by the Government today, The Times has learnt.

The changes will lead the way to a complete shift to the selection of university places after publication of examination results, in the most radical transformation to the centralised admissions system since it started more than 40 years ago.

The 300,000 students who begin sitting A-level papers this week will have to ditch their confirmed university places to bid for a course at better universities if they achieve higher grades than have been pre- dicted by teachers.

But from 2008 a new upgrade week will allow those who do better than expected to seek places at universities that they may not have considered previously for fear of getting insufficient grades. They will be able to hold on to confirmed offers at the universities they had chosen while they seek a better alternative.

The reforms follow concerns that talented state school pupils are missing out on places at the best universities because their teachers tend to predict lower grades than those from the independent sector. Ministers believe that the reform will encourage more students, particularly from poorer backgrounds, to set their sights higher once they realise that they have the grades to compete for the best universities.

A-level results would be released a week earlier to give students the time to make fresh applications. Universities would be expected to hold back a proportion of places so that they can consider these candidates.

At least 9,000 students are expected to benefit from the upgrade week. Changes to application forms will also be introduced within two years. Students will apply to five universities initially, instead of six as at present, and will have their AS exam results included alongside predicted A-level grades.

Predicted grades, which are inaccurate in 45 per cent of cases, will be removed from application forms if AS grades are shown to be a better mea-sure of students’ final results.

Admissions tutors will begin to consider candidates only after the deadline for all applications has passed, eliminating concerns that some students gain an advantage by sending in their forms early.

A partial post-qualification applications (PQA) system will be controversial, however, with the leading universities claiming that holding back places could disadvantage initial applicants and others that it implies they are second-rate.

Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, said that the reforms would be much fairer. “I believe these two-stage reform proposals will help us to achieve that.”

Members of the Russell Group of 19 leading universities, which are heavily over- subscribed, have been reluctant to endorse the reforms but have been persuaded of the benefits of considering more candidates. They will not be required to hold back a fixed quota of places and all institutions have agreed to participate in the scheme.

Both new candidates and students who were rejected at the initial application stage will be able to seek places if their results are good enough.

The CMU group of 31 universities, representing many of the former polytechnics, fears that the new system will rob them of many of their most able applicants, who could drop confirmed places at the last minute because of a better offer.

All sides were convinced to back the reforms by the promise of a review in 2010 to examine their effects, and the prospect of adopting an applications system based entirely on final exam results two years later. Ministers hope that the changes will break the log jam that has prevented reform of admissions so far.

Schools and universities favour a full PQA system but neither side has been willing to change its academic timetable.

By establishing a better match between students and universities, based on results, ministers believe that the reforms will create the momentum to allow all 350,000 applicants to seek places after the publication of exam results.

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