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One parent who “did” all three children at once by having them baptised told The Times that the Church of England faith school she was targeting was so good that she would have paid independent schools fees if that would have guaranteed places there.

The mother, who asked to remain anonymous, is hoping that her eldest daughter will achieve a place at Lady Margaret, a voluntary-aided Church of England secondary school for girls in southwest London.

Neither she nor her husband practise any religion and neither of them is baptised. But the woman defended her sudden desire to attend church on Sunday. It was triggered, not by wanting to save on the school fees she is currently paying, she said, but because her oldest daughter began attending church to sing in the choir. The weekly church visit to hear her sing soon became an outing the entire family looked forward to.

The mother said: “We were looking at schools and they required churchgoing families. My eldest daughter started singing in the choir because she loves music, and we were going along to support her. We thought that we might as well get them all baptised in one go. It was not done completely for school reasons.”

She said there were historic family-related reasons for not having them done as babies. “It was quite nice, doing them all at once.”

She said she was being true to her beliefs. “I would consider myself a Christian. The two church schools we are considering are fantastic. We are prepared to pay school fees, but if we could get away with not paying one set of fees it would make an enormous difference to our lives.

“Trying to get a child into Lady Margaret is like buying a lottery ticket.”