Most schools break policy on admissions, says inspector

Half of the schools in England are breaking new admissions rules designed to stop pupils being cheated out of places, the chief schools admissions adjudicator, Philip Hunter, has warned.

Schools are asking discriminatory questions about parents' marital and employment status although that is a clear breach of the law, Dr Hunter will warn the Government in his national inquiry into how places are allocated. Critics have claimed popular schools have used the results to turn away children from poorer homes.

New evidence is also emerging of parents being charged "fees" before their children are accepted for places. In particular, parents seeking to find sixth-form places for their children who have either attended private schools or 11-to-16 comprehensives are being charged "administration fees" of up to £50 to transfer. The evidence will be in a separate report on school admissions next year.

Dr Hunter also revealed there had been "widespread" failure by schools to make clear their admissions rules, with children unfairly missing out on places because of confusion over how to measure the distance between applicants' homes and the school.

The revelations, the interim findings of his national inquiry into the way schools and academies in England decide which pupils should have places, will be submitted to ministers next month.

The inquiry was ordered by Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Schools, this year after a study of three authorities found "a significant minority" of schools were breaking the laws, most controversially, by asking parents for financial contributions. One school, Beis Yaakov Jewish primary school in Barnet, north London, was asking parents to sign up to a contribution of £895 a term.

Dr Hunter, who surveyed 3,500 schools, concluded that half of the admissions authorities – local authorities and schools which set their own rules such as faith schools, academies and foundations – were breaching the new code, brought in this year to make the admissions process fairer.

He told The Independent: "The Secretary of State was certainly right to identify a series of issues about compliance of the admissions code. There were a lot of technical and administrative issues which made schools' arrangements non-compliant with the code. It was not wilful disregard of the law, but administrative confusion. But it is quite widespread."

But evidence obtained by members of Rise, which conducts research into state education, has unearthed further cases of parents facing charges. It will publish findings on the subject next year.

Parents' leaders believe some schools with sixth-forms are taking advantage because parents wanting to switch are used to forking out private school fees and will not baulk at a further £50. Some of the parents, they say, want to switch to a good state school for A-levels because it might help with university admissions now that the Government is trying to persuade them to take in more state school pupils.

About half the breaches uncovered by Dr Hunter were due to badly written admissions rules. They failed to provide proper definitions of what they meant by parents, siblings, addresses and distances. The remaining rule-breaking occurred when schools – usually faith schools – used supplementary forms asking inappropriate questions about parents' jobs or marital status. Faith schools are allowed to ask applicants to provide evidence of their faith, for example, a reference from a vicar about church attendance, but not about applicants' more general family circumstances.

Dr Hunter revealed the interim findings of his report at a conference of admissions officers in London yesterday. "Nothing led me to believe that people were trying to select by stealth," he added. "Information like the occupation of the father or whether the parents were married was not being used in the admission process. But these questions were often there on the forms and they should not be. Simply nobody was realising that supplementary forms were part of the admissions procedure, but now they know."

David Laws, the Liberal Democrats' schools spokesman, said; "It is shocking so many schools are breaching the admissions code. Cases where schools are asking questions about a pupil's background are totally unacceptable. It is parents who should be choosing schools and not schools cherry-picking children."

Chris Waterman, head of the research organisation Iris, which has also studied school admissions, said Dr Hunter's findings highlighted the need for independent observers to sit in on school admission meetings.

Dr Hunter will recommend that national definitions – for example about how to measure distance – be included in guidance to schools and authorities from next year.

His review has involved a sample of nearly 4,000 admissions policies from admissions authorities. Nine barristers were assigned to assess the policies and judge whether they complied with the code.

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