The head of the UK’s Office for Schools Admissions has warned that faith schools’ admission procedures could be discriminating against immigrant families.

Many Roman Catholic and Church of England primary schools, facing oversubscription, are using points based systems to rate the religious commitment of prospective parents.

In some schools parents are given extra credit for baptising their children in the first few months after they are born.

But Dr Ian Craig, head of the Office for Schools Admissions (OSA), said this could disadvantage immigrant families, such as those from Eastern Europe, where it is the tradition to leave baptism until the child is one-year-old.

He said: “Churches are saying we are measuring your commitment to the church over and above the number of times you come to church and worship.

“We have come across some cases where that sort of thing benefits the white middle-class area and does not necessarily benefit some of the immigrant communities.”

In the OSA’s annual report Dr Craig also said there was a continuing problem with faith schools using complex admission rules to favour children from wealthier homes.

In his report he said: “I do not generally think we have come across schools that have done that to skew their intake but our view is that it has been skewing its intake.”

In some cases parents are given credit for taking part in activities such as bell ringing and cleaning the church.

But Dr Craig said it was important these rules did not unfairly discriminate against those from poorer backgrounds.

He explained: “You might have in a middle class area a lot of women who aren’t going to work who might be able to go in and clean the church. It may well be in a more working class area there isn’t that ability.

However, his suggestion that faith schools have a potentially exclusionary effect is contradicted by a study conducted last year which showed that faith schools run by are better at building community cohesion than secular schools.

The research, commissioned by the Church of England and led by Prof David Jesson of the University of York analysed the Office of Standards in Education ratings given to 700 primary schools and 400 secondary schools for promoting community relations.

It found that secondary schools run by faith groups scored eleven per cent higher for their promotion of community cohesion when compared with secular schools.

The report also concluded that faith-based schools outperformed secular schools by almost nine per cent when it came to tackling inequality.

Researchers gave schools a score of one if they were rated “outstanding”, through to four if they were deemed “inadequate”.

Secondary schools run by faith groups scored on average 1.86 compared to secular schools which scored on average 2.31.

Faith-based primary schools and secular primary schools came out on par scoring an average of 2.2.

Of the 74 faith-based secondary schools surveyed, almost a third (32 per cent) were rated “outstanding” at community cohesion, while only one in seven (14 per cent) of its secular counterparts were awarded the same standard.

Prof Jesson concluded there was “clear evidence” that faith schools were awarded “substantially higher” grades for community cohesion than other schools.

The study states that this finding is particularly relevant to the debate about schools’ contribution to community cohesion.

It says it “runs completely counter to those who have argued that because faith schools have a distinctive culture reflecting their faith orientation and are responsible for their admissions that they are ‘divisive’ and so contribute to greater segregation amongst their communities”.

“This is clearly not supported by this most recent Ofsted inspection evidence”, he added.