Do Catholic Schools Have a Future in Britain?
by Joanna Bogle - November 5, 2007
Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic.com, the leading online journal of Catholic faith, culture, and politics.
There is a debate going on in Britain about Catholic schools. It is taking place at several levels.
At the level of government, there is much lip service paid to the value of "faith schools" because of their undeniable popularity, but there is also considerable tension about them.
The expression "faith schools" is irritating – it's a way of avoiding the term "Church schools" and implies that any and every "faith community" can or should run a school and get public funding to do so.
In fact, this is not the case. Roman Catholic and Church of England schools have a long tradition in Britain – because the Church was running them for well over a thousand years before there was any government involvement at all. Catholic schools have for many years received full support from public funds. In other words, no parent needs to pay any fees in order to send a child to a Catholic school: such institutions are funded through taxes. (Of course, there are independent Catholic schools which are fee-paying – these range from the famous ones, such as Ampleforth and Stonyhurst, to many less well-known Catholic day-schools across Britain.)
For many years following the 1944 Education Act, Catholic schools were in a most favorable position in Britain. They had complete freedom to teach the Catholic Faith, and no real financial worries. They received generous support from the Catholic community to fund any gaps left by lack of public money, so all sorts of extras like chapels and swimming pools and good equipment were provided through money-raising events organized by parents and parishes.
But things are a bit different today. Over recent years a number of major concessions have been made by the Catholic education authorities, apparently in response to fears that the schools might otherwise lose some public funds. Thus, it has been agreed that schools can no longer interview parents to assess the suitability of the school for their child. Labour party policy is to eliminate "elitism," and there was concern that Catholic schools might be using interviews to select children from practicing Catholic families with sound morals and strong Church affiliation, which might thus provide their offspring with benefits that could render the children part of an "elite." The same Catholic education authorities have also apparently conceded the right to dismiss teachers who are openly living in a way opposed to Catholic teaching (for example, by being in a "gay marriage" through having contracted a civil union with a same-sex partner).
Catholics concerned about such trends have begun to be aware of the need to defend their schools. Thus, when the Secretary of State for Education proposed, in the name of eliminating "elitism," that 25 percent of children at all "faith schools" should be from outside the faith, there was an uproar. It would have meant that many children from Catholic families would be denied places at Catholic schools, while non-Catholic children would be given priority under the new quota system – a bizarre and ridiculous situation. The government caved, but only after extracting a commitment from the Catholic bishops for some sort of informal voluntary quota agreement in association with local needs.
