Roman Catholic schools are refusing to admit pupils who have been baptised late by parents anxious to get them into top-performing schools.Parents are going through a "five-year epiphany" when their children reach school age, with a consequent dramatic increase in baptisms of older children.
Many schools are now refusing to accept such late baptisms. Some set the upper limit at 12 months, others within a few weeks of birth.
At St Joseph's RC primary in Maida Vale, London, said Peter Stanford, a governor, "if you have had your child baptised at two or three or four they won't get in."
At London Oratory, a grant-maintained Catholic school in Fulham where Tony Blair sent his two eldest children, the policy is only to admit children baptised no later than four months old.
Staff confirmed that it helped to weed out parents who were playing the system to gain admission. Last year the school had 700 children chasing 160 places. Its head teacher, David McFadden, said: "Our policy has never changed. There are a series of admission criteria, all of them based on canon law.
"The first criterion is based on Mass attendance. The next is to what extent the Catholic parents have met their obligations regarding the Church's sacramental practice, including baptism."
Another top Catholic school, Sacred Heart High, in Hammersmith, attended by Mr Blair's daughter Kathryn, specifies baptism within the "first few weeks of birth" to qualify for a place.
A 37-year-old hairdresser from Essex said she and her husband had converted to Catholicism two years ago to get their daughter into the local Catholic school.
"I did this purely for my children," said the woman, a mother of three who wished to remain anonymous.
"I wasn't religious beforehand and I wasn't brought up in a religious family. I could count on one hand the number of times we'd been to church. But I felt very strongly that I wanted to give my children the best chance. That was my main priority."
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