The think-tank report on school-leavers found that 94 percent of students in middle-class schools applied to third-level; compared with just 50 percent in working class schools.
The ESRI says guidance counselling should be provided to students in working class schools from an earlier age to raise their expectations.
Dr Emer Smyth says improving the social mix-up of schools would be one way of improving matters.
“That would be one aspect, but the other aspect would be the teaching and learning, and there would be issues around ability grouping” she said.
“A lot of more working-class schools have very strong streaming at junior cycle; and we found from earlier research in this group that the lower stream class then tend to under-performs ND they're more likely to leave school early” she added.
