Britain could have its first secondary Hindu faith school within six years under plans announced in London yesterday.

Sites in Barnet and Harrow in northwest London are being considered for the 1,000-pupil faith school.

The I-Foundation, a Hindu charity, is also examining a site in Leicester for a new all-in-one primary and secondary school, or “through” school.

Harrow Council has 48,000 Hindus living in the area, the highest concentration anywhere in Britain.

If the school is built in London the intake will include 30 children each year from the country’s first Hindu primary school. At the £13.5 million Krishna-Avanti in Edgware, primary school reception year and Year 1 children who have already started there do daily meditation, yoga and worship before a statue of the deity Krishna. The school was over-subscribed, with five pupils vying for every two places last September, and this year demand is expected to double, with five children vying for each new place.

Rabbi Jonathan Romain, a leading critic of faith schools, was among those who will oppose the secondary school. “I am greatly saddened by this because the Hindu community has been very well integrated into wider society,” he told The Times. “It is a very regressive step. It will separate children from the rest of society and take Hindu children away from ordinary schools so children from other faiths won’t know them so well.”

But Nitesh Gor, the I-Foundation director, said that it would be “patently absurd” if Britain’s one million Hindus could not have the option of a faith-based education when Jews, Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Muslims could. Mr Gor, who is also the chair of governors of the Krishna-Avanti School, continued: “We combine the ethical values and moral discipline that accompany faith education with a willingness to engage with the world beyond and prepare our children to play a full part in British society.”

Lord Dholakia, a leading Hindu peer, said: “It is simply not sustainable for Hindu parents to be excluded from often outstanding faith-based educational opportunities already available to Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs. The I-Foundation’s plans offer the opportunity to put right this inadvertent wrong.”

The Krishna-Avanti School building, which opened last September, has been formally acknowledged as the “greenest” school in Britain, according to a widely accepted environmental standard. It is also setting standards in healthy living, with its own strict vegetarian kitchen preparing meals for the children on site from scratch using fresh ingredients.