Teachers contributing to an education website last week complained of being made to “lump it” with “bottom of the league” schools where drugs and bullying were rife.

Some said they had opted to pay for private education while others wrote of pretending to be devout Christians to win places at a church school.

The postings on the website came in the week parents across much of the country were told the state schools at which their children had been given places.

The comments bear out a poll of 700 state school teachers in the Times Educational Supplement (TES), which found that one in four state school teachers would educate their children privately if they could afford to.

Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said he was concerned by the entries on the TES website, which is mainly used by state school teachers.

“Teachers know the school system best,” said Smithers. “If they are thinking it is not good enough for their children, that is an indication that something must be seriously wrong.”

Because they can comment anonymously on the site the teachers are open about the failure of the system to provide enough good schools.

One complains about being offered a place at “Hell High” — the description for a comprehensive where exam results are poor and pupils get away with disruptive misbehaviour.

The level of dissatisfaction is likely to worry ministers who are planning changes to the admissions system designed to make it harder for middle-class parents to ensure they win places in the best schools.

In some areas as many as half of parents fail to get their child into their first-choice school, according to a survey last year. Parents living in the southeast are the least likely to win places at their first choice.

One teacher, identified only as “adj”, wrote: “My daughter has been offered a place at our last-choice school — didn’t even look around it as 18% GCSE rate says it all (but it is the nearest school). Thank God she passed the exam for the nearest indie school even if it means a remortgage for her to go there.”

A teacher identified only as “bhangragal” wrote: “I wouldn’t mind so much about lack of choice if my son had been allocated to an ‘okay’ school, but that obviously was too much to expect.

“It makes me so angry — no politician would ever dream of sending their children to a bottom of the league comp, but we’re expected to lump it.”

Some teachers openly admit to playing the system to get their child a school place. One posted: “Mrs Manc and I have had to pretend to be pious Christians for Manc junior to get into our preferred single-sex ‘faith’ high school.

“It’s big stakes. If he’d been shunted off to the nearest school with places, I would have paid for private. There’s no way I want my child consorting with what is often euphemistically called a ‘cross-section of society’. I only want him to experience the sector of society that I approve of. Very politically incorrect. But there it is.”

A contributor to the website, who calls herself Pandora Peroxide, said she planned to use her parents’ address to get her daughter into a good school.

She wrote: “I’m going to play the system. I know three other families in the year group who are doing the same.”

Last year the deputy head teacher at Holy Cross primary school in Fulham, west London, was caught trying to use a false address to get her child into a popular comprehensive.

It is not known how many teachers in the state system send their children to private schools, but the numbers are likely to be substantial.

Andrew Boggis, headmaster of the independent Forest school in Snaresbrook, east London and chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, said: “We have a number of teachers’ children in this school. Like all parents they are pragmatic about the choice of school.”

The average salary for teachers in the state sector is £32,000 and the cost of a day school place can be as much as £12,000 a year.

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