A CHANGE in the way school places are allocated is set to penalise children who fail entrance exams for grammar schools by forcing their parents to send them to poorer comprehensives.

For the first time this year parents in many parts of the country have to list schools on one application form. Oversubscribed comprehensives are turning away applications for children whose parents have not put the school down as their first choice.

Until this year parents were able to make separate applications to as many as 12 schools.

The new system means that many families must decide whether to try for a grammar school and risk their child ending up in one of the weaker schools in their area or take the safer option of putting a good comprehensive as first choice.

Heath Mulqueen, from Epsom, in Surrey, has decided not to risk putting her daughter in for entrance tests for grammar schools in nearby Sutton.

“If I put a grammar school first, I rule out the local comprehensive because that school will only consider parents who have listed it as their first choice,” she said.

“She is bright enough to pass the entrance test for the grammar but I think the new system is unfair because I don’t really have a choice.”

Other parents complain that most Roman Catholic schools and some Church of England secondaries — traditionally some of the best -performing comprehensives — insist that they will not consider taking children who have put a grammar first.

John McIntosh, headmaster of London Oratory in southwest London, the Catholic school chosen by Tony and Cherie Blair for three of their children, said that the rules allow him to restrict places to those families who most want a place.

“This school is oversubscribed, so we should consider those who want to come here so much that they put us down as first preference,” he said.

Grammar school heads claim that schools which insist on taking only those that list them as first choice are being unfair to parents.

Dr Martin Howarth, headmaster of Wallington County Grammar school in the London borough of Sutton, said: “Catholic schools are acting in their own interests because they want the brightest children and they are dissuading parents from putting grammars first on their list.

“It generates a lot of anxiety among parents.”

Ian Birnbaum, director of education in Sutton, which has five grammar schools in the borough, has written to ministers asking for comprehensive schools to be prevented from insisting that they will take only children from families that have put them down as first preference.

David Miliband, the schools minister, has replied saying that no government action is planned to prevent schools taking such measures.

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