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Parents have to pay an average of more than £45,000 extra to buy a home close to the best-performing secondary schools in London, according to new analysis.

The “good school premium” can run to hundreds of thousands of pounds in some parts of the capital with homes near the London Oratory School in West Brompton — where Tony Blair sent three of his children — commanding £330,000 more than the surrounding area, a study from London estate agents Stirling Ackroyd has found.

Across London as a whole it found that prices are on average eight per cent, or £45,294, higher in good school catchment areas compared with the broader local property market.

The findings come after Theresa May admitted that Britain’s education system suffers from “selection by house price” as she defended her plans to lift the ban on new grammar schools.

Critics have said children from less well-off families will not benefit from the return of selective schools but supporters of the Prime Minister believe that even under the current system it is often only wealthier families who are able to afford homes near good state schools.

The concern is backed up by the figures from Stirling Ackroyd, which compared house prices in the postcodes of London’s top 25 state schools, as measured by GCSE results, with the broader surrounding area.

The biggest mark-up in percentage terms is for the eighth-ranked Queen Elizabeth’s School in Barnet, where local prices are 34 per cent above the average for the broader area.

The gap is bigger for selective schools — an average premium of £58,612, or 11 per cent — than for the top 10 comprehensives, where the premium is an average of £27,557, or four per cent more than the local area average.

However, there are some exceptions to the trend, such as Twyford Church of England High School in Acton, which had the 20th best GCSE results with 87 per cent of pupils getting at least five GCSEs graded A* to C.

Average prices locally of £744,202 are 43 per cent below the west London average, suggesting it is the “best value” good school catchment area in the city.

Andrew Bridges, managing director at Stirling Ackroyd, said: “The fact that a top state school can push up local prices by a third of a million — almost double the £180,000 cost of sending a child to private school — demonstrates their pulling power and ripple effect on the local market.”

The findings were backed by separate figures from agents Savills, which found that the average house price around the best performing non-selective state schools is £955,837 in inner London, equivalent to a 15 per cent premium of £124,674 above the average.

It found the premium is £45,323 — very close to the Stirling Ackroyd figure — in outer London.