OECD: fifth of British teenagers 'drop out of school at 16' This comes amid controversy over admissions systems already operated by some English secondary schools. In recent years, growing numbers of schools have opted to select pupils using a "lottery" to break the middle-class stranglehold on places. The Government has also introduced a "pupil premium" - giving schools extra money to admit pupils eligible for free meals. The study said: "Providing full parental school choice can result in segregating students by ability, socio-economic background and ethnic background and generate greater inequities across education systems. "Choice programmes can be designed and managed to balance choice while limiting its negative impact on equity... Policies are also required to improve disadvantaged families" access to information about schools and to support them in making informed choices." The OECD report - Equity and Quality in Education - charted the number of pupils leaving school before entering upper-secondary education beyond the age of 16. Figures show that 18 per cent of young people failed to remain in education beyond the standard school leaving age. This is only slightly lower than the average drop-out rate among 35 developed nations, which stands at 19 per cent. It placed Britain 25th out of 35 countries in terms of the number of adults who failed to stay in education up to the age of 18. This left Britain trailing behind countries such as Korea, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia, which were at the top of the table, with very low percentages of adults failing to complete upper-secondary education. The report said that youngsters who were most likely to leave school without good qualifications were from poor or immigrant families. It set out a series of recommendations designed to stop young people dropping out of school too early and boost the numbers staying on to take A-levels or equivalent vocational qualifications. Alongside changes to admissions, it said students should not be "grouped" or put into ability sets too early as there is evidence that "academic selection widens achievement gaps and inequities." The study claimed that putting children into lower streams created a "vicious cycle" of student and teachers' expectations.