Top public school targets working-class pupils with free places

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Harrow, which wants to raise the money by 2012, is under pressure from new laws which threaten to penalise private schools if they fail to show they operate for the public benefit.

Headmaster Barnaby Lenon said few families "could begin to afford" the fees of £26,000 a year.

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Under pressure: Harrow is trying to raise £ 40million to pay for free places for working-class boys

"The political environment is unlikely to tolerate a school which is only available to the sons of the very rich," he wrote in the school magazine.

"Harrow will be socially narrow if assistance cannot be given to some middle and lower income families.

"The Harrow education is partly about the sort of friends you make at school: it will be a much richer education if the pupil population comes from a broad spectrum of society."

The 2006 Charities Act puts a new onus on charities to serve the public and will have an impact on 80 per cent of private schools.

Rosie Chapman, of the Charity Commission, which will police the Act, has said schools that fail to comply would be stripped of their charitable status which is collectively worth £100million a year in tax breaks.

Harrow, in North-West London, already provides bursaries covering all or part of the fees of 21 pupils.