Ed Miliband has admitted that there is a "huge mountain" to climb on social mobility, but defended Labour's record.

Speaking at the Sutton Trust this morning the Labour leader said:

"Despite all the efforts of the last few generations to open Britain up, the doors of opportunity are open much wider for a wealthy and privileged few than they are for the many."

He argued that steps like founding Sure Start centres and extra funding for disadvantaged pupils had helped Labour "extend ladders of opportunity".

Speaking to ITV's Daybreak earlier, Mr Miliband attacked the "snobbery" which sees university as the only worthwhile way to get on in life.

He called for companies with government contracts to be obliged to offer more apprenticeships to help young people who choose not to go to university.

Nick Clegg has proposed a new bursury for children who receive free school means and go on to study at university. Mr Clegg calls the grant, which would be worth £2500, a 'student premium', and says it would only be available to people who parents were on low incomes. Ministers insist the aid is not a rebranding of existing help. Ed Miliband will challenge Mr Clegg over social mobility, using a speech today to attack the “snobbery that assumes the only route to social mobility runs through university”.

The British Medical Association has warned that high levels of student debt and increasing pension contributions could put young people off studying medicine.

Dr Tom Dolphin told the Junior Doctors Conference "The burden of austerity is falling too hard on the shoulders of the younger generation and we are seeing this in medicine, too", and warned some medical students would hae debts of £70,000 by the time they started working.

Raising university tuition fees to £3,000 did not increase teaching time at English universities, a study by the Higher Education Policy Institute has found.

Britain's top universities have been urged to set "ambitious" targets to increase the number of students taken from under-performing schools and poor homes. The Office for Fair Access said the most selective universities had "further to go" to create a "socially representative" student body.

Leading universities have complained to Chancellor George Osborne about the Government's planned cap on tax relief on charitable giving.

Andrew Hamilton, vice-chancellor of Oxford University warned in a letter to Mr Osborne that the cap risks "undermining" giving to academic institutions.

Paul Clark, the director of policy at Universities UK, said although it was difficult to estimate how much money universities could lose as a result of the plans, they would send out a "very bad signal" to potential donors.

Yesterday senior figures, including Business Secretary Vince Cable and senior Tory backbencher David Davis expressed doubts about the proposal.

Ed Miliband has said he has "broader concerns" about the Government's education policy following the decision to change the way A-levels are structured.

Michael Gove has called on universities to create a new set of A-levels which adequately prepare students for undergraduate study.

Mr Miliband accused the Education Secretary of being a "centralising Secretary of State" who "stands for the few, not the many".

In a letter to examinations regulator Ofqual, seen by the BBC, Mr Gove said it would be for higher education institutions, rather than the Education Department, to develop the qualifications.

General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) Christine Blower said: "It's a little disappointing that he's written to Ofqual without having had this discussion with the profession."

But she accepted that whilst there are aspects of A-Levels to "commend" there is a "conversation" to be had.

"There is a very sensible courteous and professional conversation to be had with the profession. There is a lot to commend A-levels, but, you know, there is no harm done in having a look at them again.

The Russell Group of leading universities said they were "certainly willing to give as much time as we can into giving advice to the exam boards".

However the group's director general, Wendy Platt, warned that the group did not "actually have much time and resource spare to spend a lot of time in reforming A levels."

Universities are to be given new powers to set A-levels in the biggest shake-up of the examination system for thirty years.

According to the Daily Telegraph, ministers are prepared to give up control of syllabuses and hand them to exam boards and academic panels made up of senior dons from Russell Group universities, with suggestions the changes could be implemented as soon as 2014.

The number of students attending university could drop by 10% as a result of rising tution fees, the the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has said. The universities expected to be hit hardest are the newest ones, according to the HEFCE, while data shows three in four institutions are likely to suffer an overall drop in numbers.