Faith schools were accused yesterday of forcing parents to pay for places at the best state primaries and secondaries.

One Jewish school in London asked parents to contribute £895 a term when they applied for places for their children.

Yesterday the Government pledged to take action against the cash-for-places scandal, giving new powers to the independent schools adjudicator to enforce the admissions code. However, Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, came under immediate fire for waging a “witch-hunt” against faith schools, with local authorities, religious groups and opposition politicians disputing his findings.

Yesterday Mr Balls made public a report into schools in Manchester, Northamptonshire and Barnet, North London, which found that one in six was breaching the admissions code, introduced last year to ensure fair access to pupils from all backgrounds. Mr Balls said that the vast majority of the 96 schools found to be abusing the code were faith schools, which have control over their own admissions.

A total of 29 schools in the survey failed to comply with at least two requirements of the admissions code.

There was no reason to think that the picture would be different elsewhere in England, he said. The most common abuse involved schools failing to give priority to children in local authority care or refusing to take children with special needs.

But in six instances schools asked parents to make “voluntary” contributions as a condition of entry. Five of these are Jewish schools and one a Church of England primary.

Other schools were offering places to children on the basis that a grandparent had once attended, asking for personal information about parents’ marital status, giving priority to children of employees or selecting children by gender.

Of the 87 faith schools in the three areas that breached the admissions code, 42 were Church of England, 32 Catholic and 13 Jewish.

One Jewish school, the Beis Yaakov primary in Barnet, asked parents to agree to make a contribution of £895 a term on its application form. With 437 pupils on its roll, the donations could bring in more than £1 million a year, roughly half the typical budget of a primary school of that size in London.

Another, the Mathilda Marks-Kennedy Jewish school, asked for a contribution of £670 per term.

Mr Balls said that thousands of parents would be put off applying when faced with such demands, even though the donations were supposedly “voluntary”. “What you can’t do is ask on the application form for parents to sign a declaration that they will pay a voluntary contribution.

“In my judgment as a parent, parents would not think of that as voluntary. I do not think it is consistent with free state education to Continued on page 2, col 3 sign commitments to pay hundreds of pounds per term,” he said. Mr Balls came under fierce criticism for naming and shaming individual schools.

Tom Peryer, of the London Diocesan Board for Schools, accused Mr Balls of playing to the gallery of secularist backbench MPs in his party who “have it in for faith schools”.

He added that many faith schools were unfairly tainted by the Secretary of State’s remarks. “It is like telling off all the children in a class when just five have been naughty,” he said.

He added that the accusations against several schools were simply wrong. St Mary’s Church of England School, had, for example, been criticised for failing to give priority for places to children in care simply because its application form said that documentary proof had to be provided to show that children were in care.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it was looking into the cases of schools asking for hundreds of pounds. A spokesman said that Jewish faith schools had to secure additional funding to pay for security and intensive religious instruction as these are not covered by the State.

He added that a certificate of Jewish status might have to be created to by-pass the need for schools to ask for proof of Jewishness through the production of birth certificates, which may also contain other personal data.

He admitted that “there should be no mention of voluntary contributions on admissions forms”, but insisted that in most cases the admissions rules at Jewish schools would require “only minor changes” to become compliant with the new admissions code.

Michael Gove, the Shadow Children’s Secretary, said: “Ed Balls started a witch-hunt against schools which were alleged to be handing out places for cash. But there’s no evidence that money played any part in determining admissions in any of these schools.”

The London Borough of Barnet, where the offending six schools were located, rejected the minister’s “sensationalist” claims as “totally false”. A spokesman said: “Our investigations have shown that the majority relate to technical issues regarding the wording of admissions forms or to areas where the admissions code is unclear.”

Manchester said that only eight of the 17 schools named by the Government were in breach of the code. “These errors have been acknowledged and will be changed for 2009 admissions,” it said in a statement.

The new admissions code, which came into force last year, aims to stop schools giving preferential treatment to middle-class parents. It banned interviews and requests for personal information such as parental occupations. It also put a halt to requests for money as a condition of admittance, and obliged schools to secure places for children in care.

The worst offenders

Top 20 admissions code breaches in Northamptonshire, Barnet and Manchester education authorities:

— Hasmonean primary (Jewish), Barnet, 10 breaches

— Mathilda Marks-Kennedy (Jewish), Barnet, 8

— Hasmonean High School (Jewish), Barnet, 7

— Independent Jewish Day School, Barnet, 7

— Menorah Foundation School (Jewish), Barnet, 7

— All Saints Primary (CofE), Barnet, 6

— Menorah Primary School (Jewish), Barnet, 6

— Rosh Pinah Primary School (Jewish), Barnet, 6

— Beis Yaakov Primary School (Jewish), Barnet, 5

— The King David High School (Jewish), Manchester, 5

— Pardes House Primary School (Jewish), Barnet, 4

— Bishop Stopford School (CofE), Northants, 3

— Osidge Primary School (Foundation), Barnet, 3

— St Vincent’s RC primary, Barnet, 3

— St Michael’s RC grammar, Barnet, 3

— St Mary’s CofE primary, Barnet, 3

— St John’s CofE school, Barnet, 3

— St Agnes RC school, Barnet, 3

— St Brendan’s RC primary, Northants, 2

— The Good Shepherd RC primary, Northants, 2

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