Catholic schools can heal Britain’s divisions

SIR – You are right to welcome the Government lifting the admissions cap on Catholic schools and correct to attribute that wise policy to the PM’s excellent co-chief of staff Nick Timothy (Leading article, September 16). However, your caution in welcoming the potential of multi-religious trusts needs gently but firmly to be challenged if we are not to be – or be seen to be – a community with reservations about our responsibilities to the common good.

In the last year I have run workshops with young Muslim students from monochrome communities in Yorkshire and Lancashire. I have arranged for poor white working-class kids from equally monochrome neighbourhoods to have their first formal meal out in the Lord Mayor’s state rooms in Brexit-supporting Portsmouth. What these young people had in common was a simmering anger at being shut out from what they perceived to be the mainstream. They shared a lack of hope that government or businesses of any kind provided routes of participation that were open to them or those like them.