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Notes -
This is a bit of a myth actually. There are two main areas where "positive discrimination" comes into the admissions process. Probably most importantly, the extensive outreach and support provided to target backgrounds and demographics, schemes such as UNIQ and reserved open days/state specific mentoring mean that smart state school kids can often get their hand held throughout the admissions process. This might also include admissions test help and mock interviews, provided by current students or that way inclined profs. In practice this tends to benefit the middle class state school kids more than those right at the bottom of the pack, ignoring base rate intelligence. And you probably wouldn't be able to take advantage of this unless you did at least 2 years of state sixth form, and then they'd still likely check your prior history. On top of the long standing class based programs there are increasingly racially oriented schemes.
The other obvious way the scales have been tipped is by dropping standards. Classics admissions, for example, no longer require prior knowledge of Latin/Greek, although I think there are only a few of these places available where they fast track you up after you've arrived. If you lower the bar, then more people get over the bar, and so you can start to do a bit of selection for people who may be "diamonds in the rough".
In terms of direct discrimination in applications, officially this very much doesn't happen, or at least that was the case 10 years ago. Occasionally there was some extra leeway afforded over grades (getting AAB for example), but having seen behind the curtain a bit the only point where the thumb can actually get on the scale is the interviews/GCSEs, as future grades and entrance exam are scored identically for all.
As interviews are semi-subjective (although scored by multiple tutors), ideologically inclined tutors could happily penalise a posh Eton boy and help out the nervous inner city kid, but this would vary substantially. But the interviews make up at most 25% of the scoring process (tends to be a semi filtering and then 50% admissions test, 50% other stuff depending on subject). So in theory sending your kid to the good state sixth form probably shouldn't have that much of an impact unless you want to try and take advantage of the tutoring/open day opportunities. But if you go to a good enough private school then this shouldn't outweigh the benefits.
Having said all that, there are some particular sixth form colleges which seem to do exceptionally well (Hills Road, Peter Symonds) either through an extremely middle class catchment area, or extremely selective admissions (Harris Academy). The top 10 schools for admissions in 2024 are split 5/5 for state/private, and of those 10 there's a 37% admission for the private sector and 29% for the state. So it doesn't look like things have substantially changed in the last 5 years.
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