Parents asked to pay pounds 600 to school

Parents at a Catholic school in Manchester have been asked to pay a top-up fee of pounds 600 per year for their children. Gillian Shephard, the Secretary of State for Education, has been asked to intervene in the case but has refused to do so.

The move follows a long dispute between Trafford Borough Council and St Bede's College. The school is fee-paying but Trafford pays for 450 children to receive their state education there because, although it still has the 11-plus, it does not have a Catholic grammar school.

Under the 1944 Education Act, state schooling must be free, but the legal position in this case is unclear. Catholic children who pass the exam in Trafford attend any one of three independent schools, all outside the borough. But St Bede's has rebelled because it says the borough is not paying enough to cover the cost of the education. Half the school's 900 pupils come from Trafford, which pays pounds 2,578 per pupil a year. The rest pay fees of pounds 3,990.

John Byrne, the school's headmaster, has written to all the Trafford parents telling them that if the borough cannot find extra money they must pay pounds 200 per term for their children from next January. He said that without extra funds the school's finances were becoming increasingly precarious. The school had consulted its lawyers about the move, he said.

"If St Bede's College sets an economic fee and Trafford refuses payment of that economic fee then the college can and must seek extra payment from Trafford parents."

Yesterday no one at the school was available to comment but a spokesman for Trafford said: "Clearly the matter will have to be resolved. It cannot be allowed to go on but I would not wish to speculate on the legality of it."