Students could take exams earlier and apply to the university according to government plans based on the results

Students could be tricked into applying university after receiving their exam results sooner than before, according to plans revealed by the Ministry of Education.

The government has put in place a system of postponing exams like high school graduation from the beginning of the school year to give them time to grade and award them.

The proposal, which forms part of a consultation put forward by the Ministers, is one of the options being considered under a Post-Qualification Admissions step.

Under the current system, sixth grade students receive "predicted grades" from their teachers and then seek offers from universities based on who they must meet.

The DfE plan follows a review of the admissions system by the Office for Students (OfS), the university's regulatory body, which indicated that moving to a post-qualification system might be fairer.

A second model, proposed in the department's consultation, would keep the date of the exams unchanged, but the day of the A-level results was postponed from mid-August to the end of July.

The university semester would then begin "in the first week of October at the earliest" in order to allow "at least six weeks" to process applications and offers for students.

The document states that the ministers are keen not to increase the workload of teachers.

The government believes the move to post-qualification applications "is likely to have a positive impact on highly skilled but disadvantaged students," according to an equality analysis released alongside the consultation.

A study by the think tank published by the Sutton Trust last year found that two-thirds of students surveyed in September thought a post-qualification system was fairer. Only 10 percent thought it was less fair and 14 percent said it was the same.

Trust researchers warned that the current system was too reliant on "unreliable teacher-predicted grades".

On Thursday, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said in the House of Commons: "Today I also published the post-qualification reform consultation to see if the current higher education admission system would be changed to a post-qualification system should. ""