I'm posh, let me in

When my son was almost two, we viewed a pleasant and spacious maisonette on a quiet street. It was nice enough, but a little over-priced. For it had an added attraction. On the very next road reared a Beacon school of majestic local repute. We phoned in our offer on the spot – primary education sorted. Upon a second, rainy-day viewing, I mounted the stairs with a strangely leaden heart. Woodchip wallpaper, a damp bedroom and a deathly street silence suddenly made their presence felt. In a panic of apprehension, I knew we had made the wrong choice. Rashly jeopardising our son's educational future, we cut and ran.

Now I'm happy to live in a nice street with a reasonable local school – but come September 2005, I may yet turn into a ravening league table lunatic. For the sanest and mildest will backstab, hothouse their infants, and experience strategic religious epiphany in their desperation to secure a school place – a fact that, in our secular age, is as shocking as it is shruggingly accepted.

There's nothing as entertaining as the middle classes behaving badly. And when it comes to securing school places – both at primary and secondary levels – they behave very badly indeed. Reports last week that top London state secondaries such as Latymer in Edmonton are oversubscribed by 10 applications to one place will cause a fresh wave of hysteria as desperate parents hastily refine their battle tactics.

The competition for a place at a halfway decent educational establishment begins around birth time, when you find yourself tuning into league table babble, previously ignored. A year or two later, it all snaps into focus. By then, unless you are indifferent to parental rumour or lucky enough to live next door to a Beacon school, you may have two choices: move house, to a more desirable catchment area, or undergo a religious conversion that qualifies you for entry into a superior church school. This is a conspiracy of hypocrisy that can embrace the holy trinity of parent, church and school, and neatly benefit all three, while disadvantaging those who are less dishonest, or less clued-up.

The system of forelocks, tithes and priestly favours sometimes reaches farcical levels. Paul Jennings, a committed, lifelong Catholic and father-of-two who lives in the west country, sits on the Catholic parish council. However, the best school in his area is an oversubscribed Anglican school. "So we decided we would become Anglicans," he says. "We joined the parish register as if we'd just moved in, and paid £100 a month into the church's parish fund. We had to wing it a bit in the church – I'd spot other people in there crossing themselves by mistake! The hypocrisy is out of this world. We invited the vicar round, bought him Christmas presents, and sent the kids to Sunday school. Then, the minute the kid is in, we start alternating the two churches. Then the Anglican vicar senses something's up, and suggests that one of us join their evangelical Christian course. I was afraid he might kick up, so I went. After a while, I discovered half the people there were the same – Catholic, Jewish, Greek Orthodox – all pulling the same stunt! I do feel it's wrong and deceitful, but hey, what's good for your kids... .You start off outraged, then you realise that you have to do this."

Allie Strickland, whose son attends a heavily oversubscribed Church of England school in London, started down the same route, taking her little one to the required church each Sunday. But in the end, she couldn't tolerate the hypocrisy: "I just felt like such a total fraud, so we stopped going to the church." Her son was rejected, then offered a last-minute place. The school is so popular, that even the usual entrance criteria (siblings, church attendance, proximity, special needs) don't always apply. "Last year," says Allie, "it got seriously out of control. Even siblings weren't getting in. Teachers were getting abuse, and people were shouting through the gates."

However, the fee-paying route is not as simple an alternative as many believe. The average private school is oversubscribed, and the academic competition fierce. Some schools test children at the age of four. At secondary level, tutoring is near-obligatory for anyone coming from the state system. The fiercest competition is at selective state secondaries, such as the Brompton Oratory, where the Prime Minister sent his sons. Desperate parents will often put their children through a gruelling round of tests at different schools, setting them up for the possibility of failure at a young age.

A sense of entitlement prevails among those used to getting everything they want; consequently, there's outrage if nepotism cuts no ice in the admissions lottery. "I think a lot of people think, 'We'll buy our way in. We're middle class; we've got money,'" says Allie Strickland. "And for us, it didn't work. We gave 500 quid to the school, and they didn't give a hoot about that."

"It's totally non-selective," says Kate Frood, head teacher of Eleanor Palmer, a small but popular primary school in north London. "There are such clear guidelines from the local authorities. I have to trust the integrity of the parents, and I am completely closed to any form of, 'But I...' this and 'But I...' that."

Jackie Hardie, first deputy of Latymer school, which sets an entrance exam, says that all parental appeals are dealt with externally: "There is a formal appeal procedure, through an independent panel. We take whichever children they say we have to take."

The extent to which string-pulling does or doesn't work is bafflingly unclear, the official loudly clashing with the anecdotal. "People are relentless in their quest," says Allie Strickland. "But it's so arbitrary in some ways. You hear of somebody getting in under the wire, and you can't think why."

Tania Stuart, who is waiting to hear if her daughter has been admitted by a good local primary, was asked by a friend if she could put her name on her rent book for address purposes. "I know of people using a nearby relative's address who got away with it," she says. "But they're getting stricter – I had to send a council tax bill." There are stories of prospective parents ferociously gazumping, approaching semi-acquaintances in possession of a convenient street number, and offering strangers money in exchange for the use of their address.

Then there's the medical route. "A lot of them go to the doctor to get medical notes, saying the child's got asthma and can't be near the main road," says Tania Stuart. "It's crazy at the moment, lots of competitiveness and desperation – people are so freaked out when their child doesn't get in."

"Someone I know couldn't get into the school," says Paul Jennings. "So she took the kid to a speech therapist, claiming his enunciation was a problem. The therapist said, 'There's nothing wrong with him.' But she said, 'No, I'd like you to treat him.' And it was private, so he agreed to give a little course, and write a report. Lo and behold, the kid gets in on the special needs ticket."

In a climate of rising hysteria and application numbers, you can erect a tent on the school fence and teach your child to stammer – but it may be wiser, and saner, to accept your fate. As Felicity Calder, mother of three teenagers, says, "It all shakes down in the end – if there's one place for five applicants, they're probably applying to five schools each, so they'll get into the right place eventually. You just have to try to remain calm."

Some names have been changed